Still think TITNC3: Return of the Iceberg was peak

Huh? You guys just hiring fast food flunkies?

If you want quality labor, it's available. You just have to pay for it.

I've been paid $500/hr plus expenses to fly out on a day's notice to do warehouse surveys and provide quotes on site. That's not a dollar issue, that's a white/blue collar issue.

 

I'm sure this works very well for the Germans. I've been to Germany a couple times and met many Germans. This sounds like them.

Americans, I have to think, the moment you tell them their child *cannot* be anything they want to be they will go absolutely bananas. That's not an entirely indefensible position either. We emphasize *opportunity* in our system, not result. If little Jimmy wants to try (and fail) to be an astronaut, we will probably die on the hill of defending that before we start testing people into careers.

Government wage guarantees are problematic unless backed by production. Our current inflation issue shows exactly what happens when money is introduced into the system with no produced value to back it.

 

Americans are fucking spoiled and we're dealing with those repercussions right now.

They're not actually spoiled, but that's a long discussion for another time

 

That used to be a much bigger problem then it is now. I'm not saying that there aren't guys in the trades that have substance issues. Just that the 2009 collapse seems to have weeded most of them out. What I see now is a much more "professional" carpenter.

 

post '08 every one of us (I'm in the group) was told to go to college and everything would work out. That's a failure of the system and it leads to a deficit of skilled workers who can make fucking great money doing trade jobs because their mommys and daddies said they have to go to college

 

Well, in some ways, yes. But more importantly, we have the legal right to be so. I often think the best solution for the people who envy various European approaches to certain societal challenges is that they might be best served by emigrating from the US to whatever country they like on paper.

Turning the US into a Germish type education/job system is almost certainly a bridge too far.

 

We hire anyone who wants a job. Not many make it. They'd rather an easier job it seems.

Here's the point you are missing. Quality labor isn't available no matter what your willing to pay for it. There's a shortage of skilled labor in the US in general. There's an even bigger shortage in Inyo/Mono counties. My pay base has gone up 50% in the last 3 years. My company is willing to pay for it. I'm proof. lol

 

If I had a desired skill set that Finland would accept me, I'd move there tomorrow. I have no love for country, queen, king, or dictator.

The only thing that really keeps me in the US is that what I do is easy here, and I make a decent amount of money. I make a lot of money because of the way the US regulates its business. My first choice would be Canada. My second would be one of the nordic countries.

 

I would argue failure of parenting more than the system.

My wife and I are, strangely amongst our cohort, NOT saving for our daughter's college education. She's only 2, but we don't intend to do so at all. We may contribute some or all of the cost of a college education if there is one when the time comes. There may not need be one. As you have aptly pointed out, it's a terrible decision in a lot of cases.

Why more parents don't examine the possibility of not sending their kids to college baffles me.

 

Hire me. $200/hr. I will be there every day, sober, and do whatever it is you need me to do

 

Contradict much? lol

 

If you'll forgive me, this does not sound like a system that is failing you and/or not working.

 

I took the high road and chose to not breed to perpetuate the system.

 

No, no contradiction......well maybe in the short term. Like I mentioned earlier. Education will solve the problem. There's still plenty of highly skilled laborers out there, you just don't want to pay for them.

 

I'm only in this for myself. As terrible as it sounds, I don't give a shit about the rest of humanity. I just want to go fishing

 

This would be a fantastic one sentence summary for any given Economics 101 textbook.

 

You could write a book on me. Useless degree, relatively high income earner, concerned about the welfare of humanity, but only so much as I can take advantage of it until I die.

 

Don't let kairo post after 8 beers

 

also, buy GME so you can get your own swath of land upon which to spout your rhetoric

 

I'm telling you it all started with participation trophies.

We used to have winners and losers. Kids that where good at something stuck with it and became winners in that something. Kids that weren't good at it moved on and found something they where good at. Now, we give everyone a trophy just for showing up. Adult life doesn't work that way. Is it any wonder the labor force has gone to shit? lol