Bloodthirsty Liberal

May I rant for a moment?

One of the most destructive things about the way we have raised this generation of young people is that we have taught them to disrespect capitalism and business as well as plain vanilla democracy. Half of the parents I know are actually gaga over Hugo Chavez. They love Chavez because he “speaks truth to power”, meaning that even though he is screwing his own people, and in bed with Iran, he hates the US so he can’t be all bad! We voted for Obama in droves.

Obama came into office and immediately put the business world on notice. He took over companies, fired the CEO of GM, and famously said: I am the only thing between you and the mob with pitchforks. He talked down the economy. He talked down the stock market, (allowing some sharp people to make a bundle).

It seemed to me that the very people who loved him the most, the young people, would be the ones that suffered the most. Afterall, everybody can’t work for a non-profit. Somebody has to work at a company and make enough money to give it to the tax man or to the non-profit, right?

But the idealism trumped common sense This is a very liberal columnist, Bob Herbert of the NY Times, noticing that young people can’t find work.

That period right after college graduation is when young people tend to think they can set the world on fire. Careers are starting, and relationships in the broader world are forming. It’s exciting, and optimism is off the charts.

So the gloomy outlook that this economy is offering so many of America’s brightest young people is not just disconcerting, it’s a cultural shift, a harbinger. “Attention,” as the wife of a fictional salesman once said, “must be paid.”

Maggie Mertens graduated in May from Smith College, where she was an editor of the student newspaper. She applied for “tons” of jobs and internships, probably 50 or more. “I was totally unemployed all summer,” she said. She eventually landed an internship at NPR in Washington, which she described as “awesome,” but it is unpaid.

“I was lucky enough,” she said, “to connect up with a family that let me live with them for free in exchange for watching their baby a few times a week.” But there was still no money coming in. So in addition to the 40-hour-a-week internship and the baby-sitting chores, Ms. Mertens is doing part-time seasonal work at a Whole Foods store.

Welcome to the new world of employment in America as we approach the second decade of the 21st century.

I know many young people in Ms. Mertens position. I also know a smattering of them that are working much, much harder than a couple of years ago because companies are holding back on hiring and the lucky few with jobs are making do.

On top of that, many people are refusing to spend money because they are concerned about loss of a job.

Here’s a typical story:

Josh Riman graduated from Syracuse University in 2006. “I had a job at a great advertising agency,” he said, “but was laid off in 2007. I found a job the next day, amazingly enough, and worked at this next advertising shop for about a year and a half. Then, on my birthday, the place went bankrupt. We all lost our jobs.”

Since then, Mr. Riman has been doing freelance and “pro bono” work. He has been unable to find anything even reasonably secure.

And this is the columnist’s conclusion:

These recent graduates have done everything society told them to do. They’ve worked hard, kept their noses clean and gotten a good education (in many cases from the nation’s best schools). They are ready and anxious to work. If we’re having trouble finding employment for even these kids, then we’re doing something profoundly wrong.

You’re getting warmer, Mr. Herbert… What is missing from your analysis? They have done everything we told them to do, it is true. We never told them that capitalism isn’t evil, and that runaway socialism, in its most extreme form, actually leads to very serious problems. For all our verbiage about nuance, we never gave them any nuance in their thinking about the economy and about how human beings relate to one another on a big scale. They cheered, as I’ll bet you did, when Obama made his pitchfork remark last spring. The result of that mentality is that businesses are afraid to grow. They are making do. They don’t need to hire at this time.
- Aggie