Young People Waiting
I'm still amazed at how much propaganda people are exposed to and how seriously I once agreed with so much of it. I can no longer read anything without auditing it for b.s.
Take the following piece for example. Written for a left/progressive audience it really says nothing, yet for a "believer," it says everything and all.
Young People Wait Out the Recession…and Their Youth. By Michelle Chen
---- Beginning with the title... sounds forlorn and painful doesn't it? A mental picture of young people, life passing them by, waiting, staring into a dismal empty future, like a sad t.v. commercial - without the eye fly.
CHEN: "Young workers may not know it, but the jobs crisis threatens to turn what should be the best years of their lives into another "lost generation."
---- "Another" lost generation? I was not aware we lost others before, not to a recession anyway. We've lost a couple to generational social programs and a society that prefers doping themselves and/or their kids rather than raising them. Personally, in looking back, I found every decade of life the "best years." Although the usual batch of "revolutionary" folk heroes were telling my generation the same things - how dreary our lives were because of this or that, i.e. that being rich white people, or this capitalism, or inequalities, and all sorts of bleakness they claimed was on the horizon.
CHEN: "Do young people have anything to look forward to in this upside-down economy? The inequalities embedded in the country's young workforce are growing more pronounced."
---- The economic world is upside-down ... especially for young people. Inequalities ... growing more pronounced. "Embedded" good word for planting the idea that the situation is hopeless and you're helpless, unless our pols perform some drastic sociopolitical surgery to cut out the embedded unfairness of life. Oh woe is us, what to do, what to do. Of course, the propaganda would not be complete without calling on the immigrants and black folks, segregation, poverty, and the prison system:
CHEN: "In the Black community, joblessness consistently hovers at epidemic levels. Joblessness among blacks aged 20 to 24 edged up to 28.7 percent in January, compared to (an also frightening) 14.9 percent among whites. Neighborhood segregation and concentrated poverty already prime children for economic stagnation later in life or even downward mobility, according to a Pew study. Involvement in the criminal justice system could either take young people out of the workforce through incarceration (that's one reason why Black unemployment figures are often underestimated), or ensure that they'll have doors slammed in their faces for years to come. On top of a bleak job market, many immigrant youth are legally blocked from pursuing economic advancement. Students residing illegally in the U.S. are often excluded from higher education thanks to policies precluding subsidized public college tuitions. While they push for passage of the aptly named DREAM Act, their aspirations are left to atrophy as Washington's impasse over immigration reform drags on."
"... Black community joblessness" and "... residing illegally ..." Residing illegally? Oh that is a good one; is that what we're calling it now? "... left to atrophy..." what I call use it or lose it. And if you're waiting for D.C. to fulfill your dreams and aspirations you deserve to lose it, if you ever had it.
The white "left" still pretending that Latinos and blacks are on the same side of social issues for no other reason than pigmentation. They must believe that below a certain income level all nonwhites think alike. Black unease about immigration goes back a long way. In the 1870s, former slave Frederick Douglass warned that immigrants were displacing free blacks in the labor market.
If my sweetest daughter-in-law can teach herself English and come to America at 16 and join the Army to gain citizenship ... (see video below)
CHEN: "Internally, economic turmoil could sow a cycle of anger and defeatism that may manifest itself in depression, heavy drinking, or even family violence."
---- Sow a cycle of anger, depression, drinking, domestic violence. I guess all those rich and affluent folks have the same problems for other reasons. Or maybe 'the economy made me do it' is a one size fits all excuse.
CHEN: "In a 2008 study, analysts with the Center for Labor Market Education predicted that the low rates of teen employment (which have since intensified) meant that “Low income, Black and Hispanic teens face the equivalent of a Great Depression.” Something as mundane as a shortage of teen summer jobs has implications for future earnings, career choices, and teen pregnancy rates. The Center for American Progress and Center for Law and Social Policy have devised plans for “reconnecting” at-risk youth through public service jobs programs ala the New Deal."
---- If we don't find summer jobs for teens, they're gonna get pregnant or choose the wrong career? A standard "progressive" stink tank is cited. Center for American Progress (CAP) - funded mainly by George Soros and Wal-mart. In March, 2009 CAP strongly supported Barack Obama's escalation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Progressives for war. That's a whole other blog post.
CHEN: "Absent a comprehensive government commitment on job creation and expanding the role of the state, the AFL-CIO's survey of young workers portrays a generation adrift. About one in three surveyed workers under 35 lived with their parents. About half of young workers of color and women workers said they “worr[ied] somewhat to very often that I will not be able to afford education costs for myself.” So they do with their futures what most people do when they can't afford something they want: take a pass and try to wait out the slump."
---- Comprehensive government commitment has to create jobs lest this generation is adrift, living with their parents, worried about their future and ... oh, getting pregnant, drunk, and beating family members. One in three workers under 35 live with parents - can it be they're teenagers/students? How many are what I refer to as Crosslins? As in Nancy Grace's latest obsession, Misty Crosslin, who sits in jail begging her dad, a drug addict on probation, and mom, a drug addict on probation, and drug addict brother on probation, to please find her bail money.
And who is Chen kidding with "can't afford something they want: take a pass.." Most people today under age 40 delay nothing, it's instant gratification and they will beg, borrow, steal, con, manipulate, and reach for their cell phone to get what they want. And another thing that bothers me about "progressives." They push the insane idea that everyone should be college educated when we know that half the population can barely read and write and are ill-equipped and unqualified for higher education. Progressives have made menial/manual labor a dirty word rather than what it is - an honest day's work. (They will say it's an honest day job if done by anyone residing illegally though.)
CHEN: "But one lesson we can draw from the experiences of previous recession-era generations is that avoiding risk comes at a high cost in an economy notoriously impatient when it comes to human concerns."
---- What risks? Who is avoiding risk? Government? Policy makers? Youth? Note the "human concerns," more ideological buzz words, to make the reader feel he will suffer greatly if someone or some entity doesn't step up and risk something real soon. Previous generations were not bailed out by government - even during the Great Depression, people had helped themselves and one another by the time government got around to it. Today's rich and poor bailouts are socialism - "progressive" snuck right up on you didn't it.
CHEN: "So it comes full circle: those baby boomers donning Wal-Mart vests have much more in common with angsty cubicle denizens than you think. Workers young and old are struggling to find firm footing on an economic path wending toward indefinite misery. The longer communities and policymakers push back the question of creating a meaningful future for young workers, the more elusive the answers become."
---- Indefinite misery - unless someone creates a life for you, creates a job for you, creates passing scores for your education, creates your meaningful future, and makes certain when you're gray you never have to wear a vest, even if you want to. Damned if I know what you're supposed to be doing.
DIL - in several shots but I particularly like the cucumber one.
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