“Now if Eb needs a diploma, he should go to college so he can become a vegetarian.” – Green Acres
Please, calm down. Show me where Bernie tried to touch you.
The Mrs. and I were off to Midwestia State (Home of the Fighting Red-Crested Yaks©) on Saturday to move The Boy into the dorms. The reality is that he had left hours before us and was unpacked by the time we got there and had already managed to flirt with the girl working the dorm desk and lock himself out of his own room for the first time. I saw the look in the eyes of dorm desk girl – “cute, but still a dorky freshman who locks himself out of his room two hours after getting a key.”
I was actually shocked they still had keys – I was expecting that they’d be subjected to retinal checks to get back in their rooms. Until I heard that the floor had a shared bathroom. A co-ed shared bathroom. Imagine being in the midst of a growler when the girl of your dreams drops on by to leave the kids off at the pool? I’ve been married forever, and I like to pretend that’s not something The Mrs. does – at all.
I was surprised. I was unaware that the diet of Deadpool® was entirely comprised of burning tires.
The Mrs. and I were there, really, for The Mrs. and not The Boy at all.
When The Mrs. had talked about The Boy moving away, it had started off with a matter-of-fact statement about “. . . when we drop him off at college.”
I had responded with, “Why would we need to go up there to drop him off? He seems to be perfectly capable of carrying a few boxes to an elevator. It’s not like we’re dropping off Stephen Hawking.” This was, apparently, not the thing to say to a mother getting mentally ready to cope with her eldest son going off to college. It doesn’t help that The Mrs. is also staring down the added mathematical certainty that her youngest child, Pugsley, will likewise be moving out within a handful of years.
She responded with: “Of course we’re going.”
If you can put “icy” into a tone, this one was nearly at absolute zero. I saw the molecules in her exhaled breath stop vibrating as they fell to the carpet and form a nice Ice-9 frost (look it up). I could see that we’d be driving the hours required to get to Midwestia State (Home of the Whimsical Crotch Goblins®) the day the dorms opened.
When I met Stephen Hawking, he told me that there are an infinite number of universes out there, and maybe even one where I was funny. I responded, “Here’s a great joke: Stephen Hawking walked into a bar.” That one really made him mad. Now I have to live in this Universe, where Kardashians aren’t fast food workers.
I can understand how The Mrs. felt. It’s almost always a melancholy time when a child moves out, unless that child is Johnny Depp, in which case his parents were happy to be able to announce to their friends that their house was now aerobics-free as Johnny was now doing Pilates of the Caribbean. I’m sorry. I’ll admit that there were uneasy questions floating through my mind. I thought the questions were about him, but in reality after reflecting, I realized the questions were really about me:
I thought the questions were: “Is he ready? Does he have the tools to go out into the world? Will he make the right judgements?”
It sounds like those questions were about him, but they’re not. Those questions are really about me. A more truthful way to write them is: “Did I prepare him? Did I teach him enough so that he’ll be competent and safe? Is he a good man?”
The only thing I’m sad about is that he thinks steak tastes like chicken.
I think college is a good idea for The Boy, and I’ll get back to his specifics a bit later after Morpheus is done with him.
But I don’t think college is for everyone, and I think it’s really a horrible idea for some people. I learned this from my association with a youth group. I was discussing the future with one young, bright kid – he was a junior at the time, I think. I asked him what his plans were.
“I’m going to become an electrical lineman.” An electrical lineman is the guy who fixes the big wires on the electrical poles so you can charge your iPad© and watch Netflix® – it’s like a superhero who can chew Copenhagen®. It’s technical work – you have to be smart. It’s physical. And most line failures happen during big storms. So when your power goes out for an hour? It’s a lineman who’s out fixing it in the rain or snow or ice or thunderstorm or temporal rift.
I stopped. I was getting ready to give him my “you need to go to college” speech, but hesitated. This young man had thought about it. He loved being outside. He hated paperwork. He was very smart. The average hourly wage for an electrical lineman is $30 an hour for a journeyman. With overtime, he could be making $100,000+ a year in just a few years and live in an area near Modern Mayberry where most of the nicest houses are available for $200,000 or less.
It was a shockingly (intended) good choice.
Being an electrical lineman also offered some other benefits: it’s not a career that you can do online. You have to physically be there. This is nice, so you don’t have to compete with a two billion or so people in China and India like you might if you were being a computer programmer.
This job has another advantage – it requires just enough certification that it shuts down people who would randomly try it, mainly because no matter how crispy the body is electrical companies hate to pay to have them removed. But the young man in question wouldn’t have to compete with illegal aliens, either.
Being a lineman has a third advantage: it is a basic service that you can’t outsource. You can ship a factory nearly completely overseas – I’ve heard of just this happening – but the electrical infrastructure required to run the United States has to be in, well, the United States.
One final advantage: you can start your own company, buy your own truck, and work the hours you want as a contractor to bigger electrical companies. It’s a business where if you want to be a contractor or an entrepreneur, you can be without too much difficulty investment.
The nice thing about working with kids is they often teach you things, too. The standard advice you give a bright kid with good values is go to college. This is clearly the wrong advice for many kids.
A kid growing up today will face more challenges in employment than any generation in history. Competition will take place in ways that I never had to consider during my career. And this is after automation removed thousands of jobs from factories as machines replaced skilled workers. In this new revolution, expertise from “knowledge workers” will be replaced by algorithms and databases that allow, for instance, computers to diagnose skin cancer at a 95% correct rate, versus an 87% success rate by actual human dermatologists. I know it sounds bad for the human dermatologists, but I got a 0% correct rate since all I would do is look at the picture and say, “ewww, gross.” Let’s see a machine beat that.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be a doctor.
I’m not sure that there is, in the future, a truly safe job or career to go into, unless we experience Lord Bison’s Deep Fried Econopocalypse® (and if you’re not reading The Bison Prepper, you really should be (LINK)) and then the guy who makes costumes out of leather and football shoulder pads has probably got a good career ahead of him. Owning a scrapbooking store? Maybe not so much.
Okay, I was going for Mad Max Mel, but this works. I hear they worked out their differences and went to Hooters® afterwards. Man, Jesus can put down the wings and Coors Light©.
What are the attributes of a safe job? I mean, assuming Mel Gibson doesn’t show up at your house tomorrow?
- Local – If you can’t do it over the Internet, that cuts out billions of people from getting that job.
- Certifications Required – A job, like the lineman example, isn’t something that should be done by just anyone – it requires a minimum intellect as well as training and experience. Many medical jobs are similar. I hate the way that we have, in my opinion, over-certified our world. But you can use that to your advantage.
- Other Bars to Entry – It used to be that you could give applicants for jobs an IQ test, weed out those that weren’t smart enough, and be fairly sure that you were getting someone who was at least smart enough (or not too smart) for the job. Now? You have to use something that works like an IQ test, like a college degree.
- Hard to For A Machine to Do – Blogging. That’s hard for machines, right fellow humans? I have been told that 93.2% of you like to hear that.
But there are ways that even “safe” jobs might be at risk:
- Carpenter: Carpentry, in many cases, requires no certification – any illegal aliens have taken many of these jobs in certain areas.
- Teacher: Why do we need all of these teachers? We can get a YouTube® lecture up, and have a teaching assistant give the standardized test.
- Store Associate: Check out the product features on the Internet – seriously stop. You’re not my supervisor. Leave me alone!
- Checkout Clerk: Self-service checkouts are pretty common now. I refuse to use them, period, but I can see that I’m rapidly becoming a minority.
- Johnny Depp’s Sinus Cavity Cleaner: Okay, this one is really a safe job.
Okay, I’ll admit, she’d be perfectly acceptable working picking strawberries or in some sort of insect control responsibility.
But there are other problems. I maintain that too many people go to college. In 1959, only about 45% of high school graduates went to college, and only 70% of students graduated from high school. That’s a little less than a third of the US population.
In 2016, 84% graduated from high school, and 70% of those went to college. That’s nearly 60%. If you break down the math, almost twice as many people are going to college as a percentage of people in the United States. There are only two possible conclusions: either people have gotten smarter, or college has gotten easier.
Me? I’m betting that college has gotten easier, since if you poke around a bit you can find that the average grade given to students at Harvard© is an A-. It might just be my opinion, but the only thing competitive about Harvard® might be how much a parent has to pay to get a student accepted.
See, if you build a new building on campus – not a bribe – call it Skank Hoe Hall. But having your skank daughters get in because you’ve bribed a coach? Yeah, that’s a bribe. Allegedly.
I’m pretty sure that the economy has no need of many of these college graduates in any role other than cashiers at Billy Bob’s Wiggle Striptease Hootenanny©. Many of the degrees granted are not really economically valuable – 5% of degrees, for instance, are in “fine or performing arts.” Last time I checked, we here in Modern Mayberry had our quota of mimes filled at our historical demand of zero mimes and there was a bounty on any mime caught within 5000 yards (3 meters) of the county courthouse. There just aren’t very many jobs available in “fine or performing arts” to justify 5% of college students getting a degree in that field. Thankfully, many of them have experience in their true field, food service. I hear that Florida will have a degree in Pre-Barista© next year, so there’s hope yet.
One thing I did note in the hour I spent sifting through the data is that many degrees are more helpful, and, potentially more stable. Health and medical sciences accounted for 10% of graduates, and those jobs are hard to replace with a machine. You have to have people helping people. Robots can diagnose, but at least for now, a doctor has to do the cutting, and a nurse the nursing, until Arnold Schwarzendoctor 2000™ arrives.
That’s a realllllllly long thumb.
I would speculate that we have twice as many people going to college as necessary, and we could replace the expense and time wasted at college for many people simply by allowing employers to give IQ tests. Yes, doctors and nurses need school. But we have approximately 1,000,000% more anthropology degrees than required to maintain our civilization, and an infinite amount of Women’s Gender Studies degree recipients than required.
I advised The Boy on how he could take what he enjoys doing, and turn it into something useful. Don’t compete with billions of people – find ways that you can provide higher value services to people in ways that have to be local and are hard to reproduce. I think he has a pretty good plan.
Given the accelerating pace of change we’ve seen in the last two decades, I imagine that anyone starting a career in 2020 may have to make multiple changes during their life. From what I’ve seen so far, I think The Boy is well prepared for school and the changes that he’ll see in life. I think he’ll do fine. It’s time to let that eagle fly.
Unless it’s Putin’s Eagle.
Hey, speaking of Matrix memes, didja know there’s a new Matrix movie coming out, no joke? Neo and Trinity are onboard. The only change from the original cast and crew is that the Wachowski Brothers who produced the original Matrix Trilogy are now the Wachowski Sisters.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-08-20/the-matrix-4-movie-keanu-reeves-lana-wachowski
https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Lana-and-Lilly-Wachowski.jpg
Woah.
I did hear about that. All of that . . . and I’m not going any further!
This is a great piece. I had no business being in college. Somehow I got my degree…I wrote enough checks…and became a bartender. Eventually I became a Marine. My sons will learn a trade and then they can continue to college. If they want to study philosophy it’s on their dime. When my Marines we’re transitioning I pointed them toward jobs like linemen or salvage diving/underwater welding.
One other reason for pursuing these jobs is that nobody wants to do them. The nature of a tough job weeds out a great percentage of the lazy assed population. Thanks for a great article.
Mac, thank you! Yeah, the starting point for success is . . . showing up on time, awake, and ready to go. It’s amazing how difficult that is for some people. At one point I almost chucked it all to become a lumberjack. If I had done so, I imagine my nickname would now be “Stumpy.”
There have been numerous incursions into the trades over the years by non English speaking illegals, but that’s on the wane.
(I’ve been in the construction business for over 30 years).
The trades are more technical these days, and carpenters, plumbers, electricians and also most of the specialty trades require a working understanding of the various systems or you’re not going to be able to do the job. English is a real necessity for employees.
There has also been a clampdown on companies hiring illegals, despite what you read in the lamestream media, and many companies are just not that eager anymore to deal with the hassle of paying guys cash. It’s harder to hide.
I would encourage any youngster to get into a trade, it will ALWAYS be able to provide you with a decent income.
I beg to differ; come to Califrutopia and I’ll show you.
Construction foremen who can’t speak English and Spanish are the ones getting fired.
The grunt-level guys get the English translated for them by the bilingual Straw Boss.
As a rule, the journeymen are illiterate in both (or all) languages.
I know, because I see their sign in sheets at the ER.
And no white guys need apply for laborers or entry level construction positions.
Especially at firms where at least one co-owner is nominally Garcia or Valdez, in order to qualify for those minority-owned contracts.
The same is true in NV, AZ, NM, CO,TX, FL, and the Northeast.
Because apparently Aztlan, or Assland, or however you spell it, extends all the way to Hudson Bay.
Older brother just retired from construction trade, and I’ve been hearing this refrain every holiday non-stop for 30 years.
He had to leave CA in the 1970s just to get steady work, because he couldn’t get hired in his home state for being white.
And now, Africans from Africa are pushing the mojados out.
That’s how America has worked since ever. Indentured servants and criminals, then plantation slaves, then Irish, then coolies, then po white trash (native and foreign), then eastern Europeans, then latinos, and now Greater Trashcanistan and Sh*tholia. As long as they assimilated, it worked. But they stopped doing that in the 1960s.
Your experience from Somewhere in Flyoveria where it’s still America is nice, and even somewhat encouraging, but’s it’s not the rule in the most populous states. Which is 1/3 of the country, and pushing towards half of the population.
Demography is destiny.
You’re probably right about the left coast and southwest, but not so much on the east coast. I general contracted from Maine to Virginia for 25 years and saw an upswing in the late 90’s of illegal immigrant labor, but since then not so much. I know A LOT of general contractors all over the country. The mindset has changed. We are significantly less willing to hire illegals, they have too much baggage and liability attached. I hope this trend continues.
One thing I have noticed over my career in the building trades is the increased complexity of materials and tools. This helps to keep the low IQ crowd off the scaffold.
Assimilation? I heard that was a naughty word?
Construction is good, honest work. Best to be on a side that requires certification, though . . .
You were on fire today-I wasn’t sure which hurt my gut more, pooping jokes or dissing on The Wheelchaired One ( it might just be me, but I don’t like being reminded of human frailty, and that guy is scary ). On a serious note, the advice is spot on. I know the Wall is a whopping hundred yards long now, but illegals are still being ushered in and welcomed to their choice of Sanctuary City. Silicon Valley is chockablock full of Hindus on work visas. Don’t be easily replaceable. Best advice you need on job choices. I’d add the second best-don’t need as much money as everyone else. The trend for less wages is not stopping. And beware the medical industry. Lots of foreigners there, too, and the price inflation is so insane there, something will have to break. Beware the explosion in that industry.
“Price inflation” is going three places: the corporate suites/government administration offices, the insurance companies, and the malpractice lawyers’ offices.
If you can figure out how to break that iron triangle, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
{And BTW, for a one-time investment of less than the cost of a new car, you could buy all the equipment and most of the medical supplies (including most of the meds) to care for yourself, to the same standard as your doctor does now, for the rest of your life, including 95% of the equipment, machines, and supplies, and the 5% you couldn’t do you could get for cash at the county hospital, and a visit to any barely-passed his FML-exam doc straight off the boat. Hand-to-God serious about that. You’re paying through the nose for medical care for the same reason your auto mechanic or AC repair man pulls your pants down and butt-rapes you: because you’re too busy or too lazy to learn how to do it yourself. And you don’t even listen to them when they tell you how to save money.}
Where it’s not going is to actual medical workers.
Even most doctors are simply what passed for middle class life until 1970. Ten-plus years of education and about $1M in student debt out of the starting gate will do that to you.
Only a select few are wealthy, and the tiniest top-tier are “rich”. And there are 50 PAs, nurses, techs, etc. for every MD in the system. The pay range there is also solid lower middle to upper middle class. Starting salaries when I began are what McBurgerflippers are now demanding as Minimum Wage. It’s taken me three decades to get to where I have some modest surplus on a regular basis. And in ten or fifteen more years, I’ll be living on what I’ve got, because the Social Security/Medicare Ponzi scheme will be non-existent. As inevitably intended.
As for “foreigners”, I could be wrong, only having worked 30 years or so in the biz, but the entire lash-up, top to bottom, is peopled by those willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work, including get the qualifying education and jump through the hoops required.
If that means fewer Millenial white/Anglo douchebags, because the requisite schooling is work, and the work is even workier, blame a generation of Gen-X Slacker helicopter parents, who raised stupid entitled snowflake crybabies in small hordes, who can’t pass the tests, get into the programs, or cut the mustard once they hit the floor. Clearly, The Man been keepin’ them down.
And if health care explodes, it’ll be because f#ckwits foolishly handed it back to the government.
(Hint: Medicare, starting in the 1960s, is entirely what made it as bad as it is now. Go ahead and ask for “Medicare For Everyone.” I triple dog dare you. Then go punch your parents and grandparents for letting them vote that poison into existence. Socialism kills, always, everywhere, every time. Write that on your hands, lest ye forget.)
Then you’ll see a two-tiered model in about 15 seconds: Platinum care for the wealthy, and Zimbabwe care for everyone else.
No points for guessing which workers in the system will be working in which plan, so it’ll be better (or worse) for anyone in the field, in one of the most ruthless meritocracies you’ll ever see, if there’s any such “explosion”. Remember that inescapable reality next (and every) November. Socialized medicine means you’ll be getting the worst care from the providers at every level who passed in the bottom half of their classes. Forever. Unless you’re a government official, or Bill Gates.
Just like in Russia from 1920-1990. Spasibo, comrade.
If anyone is a douchebag, do yourself and your patients a huge favor: stay at Starbuck’s and McDonalds; health care isn’t for you.
Ever.
That Iron Triangle IS the problem. We have to fix that – it’s killing the country. The Mrs. suggested making insurance illegal. At first I thought it was silly . . . .
Thank you, sir. I had fun, but I felt a wee bit naughty after finishing. Or maybe it was tipsy.
Near our Oregon family farm are the two cities of Eugene and Springfield.
About forty years ago, a gent named ‘Jerry’ started a hardware store called ‘Jerry’s’. Now, Jerry’s is two yuge home-improvement stores, one in Eugene, the other in Springfield.
Employee-owned and as big as a TheHomeDepot and a Lowe’s combined, each Jerry’s is always busy. Probably a hundred cow-orkers on the floor for every hundred customers.
(Compare that to to local branch outlet of TheHomeDepot or Lowe’s with four cow-orkers and two customers ‘just browsing’.) (Did I mention TheHomeDepot and Lowe’s are next to each other? Litter-ally, their parking lots are connected. Back-to-back.) (Is anybody flying this thing?)
Monday, I was chatting with a 5’10” redhead hardware-girl at the Eugene Jerry’s. Last weekend, she and her twin sister had their first experience the state-operated Eww Of Oregon campus. I asked about their area of study; home-schooled, both are going into organic chemistry with a focus on historical forensics. Their Plan B is marine biology and marine archeology.
A few times a year, I get a surge of hope for our species.
And ‘yes’, I think Mike Rowe is a genius. I think he earns the right to be called ‘realistic’.
Stephen Hawking and his theories… not so much.
I do appreciate Rowe – he seems very genuine, and not full of himself. I’d buy him a beer in a second.
Ahh I’m glad to hear that we need more people interested in my line of work otherwise pretty soon you won’t be able to charge anything or flush your toilets😂
If he needs any assistance give him my info and I will gladly help him out…
Will do – but he seems to be doing great, happy as can be. In our neck of the woods, his income will pop him into the top 10% in five years or so.
Son-in-law number one is an HVAC technician. He’ll always have work wherever he goes, and the company he works for here wants him to take over part of the business in the future. He also does some plumbing for them.
His nephew just finished lineman’s school.
If I had been a plumber, I could have retired and been living like a king in Patagonia.
Excellent to hear! I can’t get a plumber to return a call around here. Maybe I should check Patagonia?
If it weren’t for the teachers unions, we would have moved to a more online classroom a long time ago. Why does every school district need a mediocre history teacher that is probably sexting with students when you could have one really great history teacher giving lectures to 500 classrooms? This is even more true at the university level and is also applicable for most mega-churches.
I am a big advocate of the trades (as a former financial services guy with a Poli Sci degree). Our local community college is swamped with the demand, they have entire classes of employees from local employers to teach *existing employees* how to weld properly and there still is far more demand than can be met. An added bonus to trade jobs, when the whole thing collapses no one will need Starbucks baristas or surly retail clerks with an M.A. in Gender Fluid Graffiti Artist History. But there will still be a demand for people who can make and fix stuff.
On the topic of college degrees replacing IQ tests, an excellent book on this topic is The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan (a college professor), who makes the argument that a college degree is not about education but is rather a signal to employers of basic mental capability as well as willingness to put up with drudgery (my review here: http://www.arthursido.com/2018/04/book-review-case-against-education.html )
Thanks for the link. Yup. IQ tests would save the economy billions in student loan debt. But what would be left? Gender studies degrees?
Americans think everything is perfect now that the US is a bankrupt warmongering police state flooded by illegal immigrants and hard work is punished with taxes and regulations and laziness is rewarded with welfare.
Americans feel like everyone is rich now that there is welfare.
Americans say that there is no crime now that everything is illegal.
Americans insist there is no terrorism because there is NSA wiretapping.