We live without a car so we ride the bus a bit. Not as much as you might think. The Lemon Girl and I both prefer to walk places given the choice and it's amazing how quickly you can get used to walking three to five miles to get places. (If Lizzy Bennet does it ...)
I also overhear a lot of conversations on the bus. Well, shamelessly and voyeuristically eavesdrop is more like it. The other day I rode downtown and heard a boy and girl from the university discussing careers. This was a cheering subject as most kids from the university tend to discuss alcohol, shopping and politics (in that order).
The less cheering aspect was that the thing they focused on most in their discussion was benefits. Sense of achievement? Not mentioned. Creating jobs and wealth by starting a business? Dismissed as too risky. Finding a vocation where you can contribute something meaningful to the community? Not mentionned.
No, what they talked about was pension plans, the possibility of early retirement and dental plans.
Student advocates often argue that we should care about students because they are our future. Well, if these two are anything to go by, we don't have a future.
I also overhear a lot of conversations on the bus. Well, shamelessly and voyeuristically eavesdrop is more like it. The other day I rode downtown and heard a boy and girl from the university discussing careers. This was a cheering subject as most kids from the university tend to discuss alcohol, shopping and politics (in that order).
The less cheering aspect was that the thing they focused on most in their discussion was benefits. Sense of achievement? Not mentioned. Creating jobs and wealth by starting a business? Dismissed as too risky. Finding a vocation where you can contribute something meaningful to the community? Not mentionned.
No, what they talked about was pension plans, the possibility of early retirement and dental plans.
Student advocates often argue that we should care about students because they are our future. Well, if these two are anything to go by, we don't have a future.
I think you're being a bit hard here. The things they were talking about are exactly the things that this generation cannot expect to get. Gone are the days of walking into a full-time job that would give young adults security and enough money to buy a home and "get started" with family life, etc. Now young people know they graduate into a world that will (if they are lucky) hire them on contract basis with no security from one contract to another, no benefits (dental or otherwise) and no pension plan. They may have to work a series of part-time jobs for many years, or perhaps forever, before building up enough savings to buy a home. By then they will be into their mid-late thirties and the idea of starting a family is very intimidating, partly because they realize they will be 60 before their child leaves home.
ReplyDeleteIt's a different work world, and not a welcoming one, for our graduates. They discuss the dream of the security and the possibility of retirement because it is what they know their parents and/or grandparents had, and they know their future is unlikely to hold such things out to them, at least not for many years of hard, unsecured, part-time, contract work ahead. And heck, I don't blame them for wanting to continue to care for their teeth.
I'm not unsympathetic. My point is that they don't get precisely the things that you insist on. They both seemed to think they had a right to walk out of university into a job with generous benefits.
ReplyDeleteIt's a brutal job market and, sorry to be so negative, I'm pretty sure it's going to get worse as a consequence of Obama being re-elected.
I would disagree with you about what used to be. Certainly the people who flog a college degree as the thing to do have made it look you could just go to college and get a good job of the kind we used to call "white-collar" but that was only true for a brief period when university admissions were opened up in the 1960s. By the late 1970s, that window was already starting to close. It was mostly an historical fluke that it was easy in those years.
When I was in college 15 years ago, I didn't think this way about the jobs I might get after graduating, and neither did a lot of people then. What is with the folks 10-15 years younger than my mid-30s self that they have these frankly grandiose notions?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Eliot Girl. When I was in college we talked about all those things you mention, sense of acheivement, starting a business, finding a vocation. Some of us did some of those things, but at some point we all realized that we needed the benefits these kids are talking about. Yes, we thought that with our undergraduate degrees we could just walk into a job that offered those types of benefits because at one time you could. Unfortunately thats when those jobs began to dry up, as you say around the late 70s. So maybe these kids are a step ahead of us in that respect. I don't think we'll ever get back to that time, regardless of who was elected President. The Corporations are too savvy and far less generous to ever be caught in that position again, they learned their lesson. So I don't condemn those kids for wanting that, unfortunately many of those jobs are done overseas now.
ReplyDeleteAs John Stuart Mill says somewhere, we might well countenance one or two people doing such a thing but what would happen if everyone did it?
ReplyDeleteThe discouraging thing is not that some people would feel this way but that it gets to be part of the general culture. In an economy where unions and the government sector gets to play too large a part, that is what happened and even university students start to think that way.
Yes, it is part of our materialistic culture now, rightly or wrongly. Those who want to "make a contribution" are considered "pie-eyed idealists," fools who will never enjoy the so-called good things in life. When I was in college only the accounting or finance geeks thought about jobs with benefits, and back then those benefits were pretty damn good compared to what they get today. Maybe the young kids have learned from the experiences of their baby boomer older brothers and sisters who wanted to "make a contribution" and majored in Anthropology. Today it is only union jobs and those jobs in the government sector that offer the kind of benefits these kids are talking about, if you're lucky enough to get one. Given the fact that the corporations got wise and aren't about to go backwards, as I see it we need more of that.
ReplyDeleteIt's a government town. Feeding at the public trough while believing the nation can't get on without them is the magic of Ottawa. They are their parents children. Not much of a past either I'm sure you'd agree. Leave town (and take me with you).
ReplyDeleteWell it wasn't always like this at least here in the US. Only when the corporations decided they could make more money by downsizing, sending jobs overseas, did the government become the employer of last resort. When I was growing up and into my early adulthood working for the State or Federal government was looked down on, now those jobs are coveted. The Corporations decided they could make bigger profits by downsizing, but more importantly by sending jobs overseas which allowed them to evade some of the regulatory issues (minimum wage laws, OSHA) of doing business in the US. They bear a major responsibility in all of this. But going back to Jules' original point, the kids graduating from college today can't provide the basic necessities of living for themselves and their families by wanting to make the world a better place, finding a job with great benefits is a matter of economic necessity.
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