Growing up I did a lot of the jobs that Leftists claim that Americans will not do, as did almost all of my peers in Paris, Illinois. When I was in High School almost all the kids had jobs, and some had two. Working was our key to adult independence and we were all eager to do it.
Just Like People in Fly Over Country
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The whole point of leftist discourse is to make accusations against those on an approved list of the despised. Rank-and-file Americans outside of designated client populations, small businessmen, police officers, soldiers, non-frivolous clergymen, corporation executives who haven’t paid the danegeld, &c.
Yup. It might be a good time to invest in companies that manufacture lawnmowers and leaf blowers.
Yup. I’ve done everything from waiting on tables for my high school friends, to working in a mental health facility for the criminally insane, to working for the Post Office. The worst was cleaning up apartments after tenants had vacated. I did that because I was a single father to two small daughters and that way I didn’t have to hire a sitter to go to work. Some of those apartments were pretty disgusting. Didn’t kill me. In retrospect, it was a strong motivation to make sure I finished school for my chosen profession so I didn’t have to keep doing them.
Same here. Washed cars and mowed lawns. Delivered the local paper door to door. Pumped gas. Worked in the kitchen at the local college, running the dishwasher and stacking the washed racks of glasses and dishes, then sweeping and mopping the floors afterward. (College kids are very sloppy eaters!) I’m sure most of the loudest whiners and complainers among today’s younger generations have never worked a non-desk job in their pampered lives. Or if they did, they didn’t last long.
I worked as a janitor in a bakery at 14 years of age; work started at 4:00 am on weekends. I mowed grass throughout all the neighborhood during my teenage years, sometimes walking miles to get to the next job assignment. My first job as a pre-qual reactor operator on my old submarine was cleaning the bilge in engineroom forward where the steam generator feedpumps were located. Even after qualification, that cleaning assignment did not end (even a small amount of oil leakage into the bilge from rotating equipment on a submarine beneath the surface is a fire hazard). These useless and worthless entitled liberal progressives have no idea what’s necessary. I wish I could send them beneath the surface under the North Atlantic chasing Russians. It’s a lesson they so desparately need.
So, let’s see: Bussing tables, washing dishes, mopping floors, delivering newspapers. …Taking orders from idiot customers in movie theaters. Yep. Been there, done that, …those t-shirts wore out a loooong time ago….
Heh. I recall for a few years there, I bought my t-shirts at country music concerts. …then realized a few years later how nobody cared, the t-shirts didn’t last, …and white t-shirts (or brown for military needs) cost a great deal less per shirt…..
Then too, I recall vacuuming floors, washing dishes and mowing the lawn for my family. Without pay! The horrors! *rolls eyes*
…looking back, it’s a wonder my folks didn’t either lecture us…or laugh….
…Although I guess I did hear very short a few “lectures” about “being a family”….
Ironic: Many jobs we might’ve done as teens no longer exist. Minimum wage laws have made them too costly.
You might still manage to get a job mowing a lawn though. Maybe bussing tables in a fancy-ish restaurant in a somewhat larger city….
Heh. Young ladies will probably still seek jobs as life-guards at city pools.
For some reason, most of us guys had little interest in being lifeguards….
New jobs have developed. One of my secretaries has a son, a Junior in High School, who earns 100 to 200 a evening in tips delivering orders for a local restaurant. Kids willing to work are likely to attract positive attention from prospective employers in my village.
The flip side of the expulsion of foreigners will be a need for Americans to accept jobs that have good pay but have lost prestige.
This should accelerate the demise of the “everybody goes to college” and that’s a good thing. There was never any reason for a secretary or a customer service rep to be *required* to have a BA to get the job.
I have a useless BA that I have never used except as a “prerequisite” to get customer service work.
When I lived in a small city I hired the son of my friend and neighbor only because she asked. The teen obviously had no interest when he said the lawn mower needed fixing. He couldn’t start it. I asked him if he had checked the gas. Nope. It was empty. When he helped me spread mulch he was complaining. I told him look what I pay you is all gravy. If he worked at CVS tax money would be taken out of his pay.The parents were both lawyers . The father had misbehaved and lived elsewhere. So no dad stuff except for tickets to concerts and trips.
Our boys could change oil, tires and bearings before they had driver’s licenses and did it for friends for money. The older one was a library page at 16. First paycheck he was appalled at money being withheld. “Dad, what’s FICA mean?”
I have been working since I was 12 years old. I babysat, mowed lawns, refinished cabinets, and delivered newspapers. At 14 I started my own business tying fishing flies that I sold to customers and the local sporting goods store. When the family moved to Oregon, I spent my first summer cleaning up logging sites which involved piling slash, streambed restoration, and putting paper cones on the tips of young Douglas Fir trees so the deer couldn’t eat them (bud capping). In college I worked in fast food and assisted living facilities, sometimes two jobs at the same time.
Newspaper delivery is gone. Flys are now produced in other countries with low labor costs. The forestry jobs are largely done by immigrants but not entirely. It depends on the location. I don’t see teens working in fast food anymore. It’s no longer an entry level job but a job of last resort.
A lumber mill in John Day Oregon closed last summer. They cited lack of a willing and drug free workforce, increasing government regulations, and low and inconsistent production due to workforce issues, among other things. In some small towns the government safety net has become a hammock where one can nap after smoking all of that now-legal weed.
One of the most interesting second jobs I had for many years, to help make ends meet, was working for a rental car company at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
Often the notable experiences one has in the occupation is the condescending treatment of rental car agency employees by individuals self-evidently of “a superior educated class,” such as one woman screaming at me that the reason that I couldn’t find her lost garage door opener in our fleet of constantly moving fleet of over 1000 cars was because “No wonder you have that job, being a high school dropout: that’s all you’re fit for!” (All the people that particular rental car company hired that were not lot attendants had to have a bachelors degree —at least. We had at least one person who had a medical doctor degree but it was from Latin America and was getting certified in the US. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met.)
But the funniest experience was a rental customer who told me how he was a very important evidently highly educated full professor at University of Pittsburgh; and he was in the Trader Joe’s parking lot and the car we had rented him “was obviously defective because it would not start.”
So I took the initial steps to arrange for a tow and a substitute car. But while we waited, “I said may I just ask you to do a couple things, please? Before you turn the key, please put your foot on the brake.”
He finally did so, grumbling throughout, and mirabile dictu, the car started. And he drove off without a word of thanks, of course.
Which ever since has reinforced for me the law: The first person to pronounce to you his/her advanced/doctoral degree(s), has just pronounced himself/herself a consummate idiot.
One thing should be mentioned here along with the diminishing willingness of youth to work.
The type of work minors are allowed to do decreases by law due to that omnipresent idol of “safety.”
I have encountered this with my teenage son. He has talent and inclination in woodworking. The law keeps him at arms length from power tools. Almost any power tool.
The way the laws are written, you can lifeguard or care for small children, but not use a power drill. Let that sink in for a minute…
In some small towns the government safety net has become a hammock where one can nap after smoking all of that now-legal weed.
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In which programs do you fancy they are enrolled?
Calvin Coolidge wrote some prose “On Persistence” … the last line of which observes: “Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.”
Ref
https://search.brave.com/search?q=calvin+coolidge+on+persistence&source=android&summary=1&conversation=8f7253688b7827c4b8fb19
Re: The Bruised Optimist’s comment > “The way the laws are written, you can lifeguard or care for small children, but not use a power drill. Let that sink in for a minute…”
… One might consider the cozy relationship between Unions and the politicians who make the laws, particularly in Michigan where such laws have become onerous. Some of the more recent laws have pretty much eliminated the ability of a skilled trades person to work for themselves or for a general contractor without joining a union, and another law that reimposes “dues skimming” from the income of home care workers
Unionized workers account for about 6% of the private sector workforce.
Many jobs we might’ve done as teens no longer exist. Minimum wage laws have made them too costly.
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In places like Seattle. The ratio of the national minimum to mean employee compensation per man-hour is not historically high right now.
Art Deco
Saturday, January 4, AD 2025 12:55pm
In some small towns the government safety net has become a hammock where one can nap after smoking all of that now-legal weed.
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In which programs do you fancy they are enrolled?
______________________________
My intent was to criticize the drug use, not any government safety net programs. Rural counties in Oregon have the highest rates of receipt of government benefits, and the highest rates of unemployment. If a major employer in a rural area can’t find employees willing to work and able to pass a drug test, those potential workers will end up being supported by government benefits programs, and possibly family members as well. They will receive housing benefits, SNAP benefits, and medical benefits due to self-inflicted poverty. It is amazing to me that in the face of high unemployment, a major employer can’t find workers.
Drug use is a scourge on our nation that has been encouraged by the Left. Drug legalization, calling drug enforcement racist, the belief that drug use is not wrong, all of these things are promoted by the Left.
They will receive housing benefits, SNAP benefits, and medical benefits due to self-inflicted poverty. It is amazing to me that in the face of high unemployment, a major employer can’t find workers.
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The medical benefits are illiquid and the late-adolescent / young adult population have the lowest propensity to consume medical services of any demographic segment. Most people who qualify for SNAP do not sign up for it. About 12% of the population lives in households which have SNAP benefits. The per person benefit averages $211 per month right now. About 2.7% of the population lives in federally-subsidized housing. These programs have unfortunate effects, but it’s difficult to believe they’re generating widespread retreat from the labor force on the part of young people.
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About 57% of the population over 16 is currently employed. (The postwar norm is about 60%). About 30% of the population between 16.0 and 20.0 is currently employed and about 65% of those between 20.0 and 25.0 is currently employed.
Art,
Citations of those stats would be good.
Citations of those stats would be good.
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The (federal) Bureau of Labor Statistics interactive data provides the number of those in each age segment currently employed. The Census Bureau provides the whole number resident in each age segment. HUD has public data on the number of individual beneficiaries of their subsidy programs. So does the USDA in re SNAP.
After pondering these comments for a couple of days my question is this; What will change the trajectory of a workforce that is vanishing?
Small business enterprises that are shored-up with tax incentives can only do so much.
Energy availability at affordable pricing will help the middle class but housing them is another issue. In what is turning out to become Vail 2, Traverse City can’t house blue collar workers.
Rent’s are astronomical and so-called affordable housing purchases from new home sales is not affordable for these workers and the new homes are being bought up by spec. purchasers who will lease them out for a time before flipping them in this insane market up north.
We have co-workers who drive 35 miles one way to work bc there isn’t any affordable housing.
If your paying child-care costs and buying gasoline at $3.30 gal. you might have to rob Peter more often in order to pay Paul.
It’s crazy for these young adults who are trying to fill blue collar jobs.
Biden’s government has come out a really stupid and expensive mandate for companies – websites must be ADA. Another jab at small businesses.
Rent’s are astronomical
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The ratio of expenditures on housing and utilities to total personal income was 0.127 in 1974 and was 0.143 in 2023. I think I’d expect something a tad more dramatic if rents actually were ‘astronomical’.
Single income avg. in GT region $34,500 annual.
A I says the average rental is $1,800 per month or $21,600 annual.
That leaves $12,900 per year for bills. $1,075 month.
Elect. $300
Natural Gas. $80
Car Insurance.$120
Health insurance.$250
Dental insurance.$30
Renters insurance.$45
Gasoline.$175
Groceries.$400
Child care.$600
No problem Art.
Put it on credit.
Haven’t a clue what you are citing. I’m citing the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The numerator is what people spend on housing and utilities, the denominator is total personal income flow. The Federal Reserve publishes data on the ratio of household income which is devoted to debt service. The ratio is around 0.15, which is about the median for the period since 1979.
In 2013 the average 1 bedroom rental was $850.00 per month. Just over 10 years ago.
Yes. Astronomical imo.
I apologize Art.
I work with people who do not have a clue as to why their cost to have shelter has pushed them 30 miles away from their workplace.
I’m sure they will appreciate these stats;
The Federal Reserve publishes data on the ratio of household income which is devoted to debt service. The ratio is around 0.15, which is about the median for the period since 1979.
That and a dime will make there day.
There are people living in disagreeable economic circumstances. There were people living in such circumstances in 2013. There were people living in such circumstances in 1974. The question at hand is whether housing costs (manifest in rent and other charges) have been increasing more rapidly than nominal incomes. To some extent, they have, but increasing from 12.7% to 14.3% over a 49 year period suggests a modest rebalancing of consumption.
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I am almost as sick of hearing about Handmaid’s Tale as I am of seeing advertisements of any kind from Pfizer.