The dead end kids., page 5
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reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 07:12 PM by poet1b
reply to post by silent thunder


I am guessing Nietzsche.

Now days we have the technology to build machines that can make a lot more shoes than a normal craftsman can turn out. That is the direction where we need to go.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 07:25 PM by calstorm
reply to post by Shadowflux


Well you described me in a nutshell. Its demoralizing to sit at home doing nothing waiting for your phone to ring praying each time that its on of hundreds of employers you hope will at least give you a shot at an interview.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 07:31 PM by silent thunder
Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by silent thunder


I am guessing Nietzsche.


Actually, believe it or not, it was early Marx. Marx believed, based on his readings of Hegel and Fuerbach, that istory was moving towards a goal of greater and greater freedom...from the level of the cell that has no freedom at all and just responds automatically to photosynthesis, etc., up through animals that have a greater degree of freedom but are still bound by their instincts, to humans, who are uniquely (according to the theory) endowed with self-awareness and choice, allowing a still greater level of freedom. To progress even further, he believed, it would be necessary for humans to take back control of their survival activities (i.e., work) from a parasitic capitalist class that did nothing but push papers and suck money from those who actually did useful labor.

It is one of history's many ironies that the name of Marx, initially preoccupied with maximizing human freedom, came to be associated with rigid government control of every aspect of life.

One of Marx's greatest flaws as a philosopher and economist was that he was very good at pointing out flaws in the current system, but maddeningly vague about what would follow if capitalism was abolished. He also believed that traits such as greed, power-lust, etc. were not innate but a product of the unnatural separation (which he called "alienation") of man from his own freedom in the form of the rigid work-and-spend cycle. He also believed that history had a kind of "goal" (increasing freedom as decribed above), rather than history being the outcome of a bunch of random events.

Marx thought the final stage of "pure communism" would be reached when the state "withered away" of its own accord, like a dead, no-longer-functioning leaf dropping from a tree in winter. He never realized that the following generations of communists would use his vagueness about the nature of what a communist state would actually entail to justify all sorts of horrific abuses of power and a crackdown that moved much of mankind AWAY from freedom.



reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 07:40 PM by ArMaP
reply to post by kosmicjack

Thanks for the explanation, the Portuguese system is so different that I didn't understood a thing of how that could be.

In the Portuguese system everyone has to pay 11% of his/her salary to the social security (the employer pays, I think, 23%), and anyone that has made the payments for at least 15 years, when they are 65 years old, can ask their "old age pension".

The amount is based in the average salary of that person during the time he/she made the payments, and there are several things that increase the amount received (one of those is the number of years of payments).

This pension can be accumulated with the normal salary (the person can keep on working while getting his/her pension).

It's far from perfect, and many people have small pensions.

PS: besides this "old age pension" there are other types of pension (professional disease, incapacity for work not related to a professional disease, need for someone to help in the house, pension for the surviving spouse and/or orphans of the worker, etc.). The Social Security also pays for the funeral, if it's needed, so anyone can pay someone else's funeral and ask for the refund from the Social Security.

PPS: sorry everybody for the off-topic, but I think it's always good to know how things work in other countries, so I think someone else must think the same and would like to know how things are in Portugal.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 07:53 PM by whistler16
Hi, this is one of my first posts, Im probably a little less of a conspiracy theorist than most of you guys, but I have always had a fascination with the occult/ghosts (when I was a kid we had a ghost club, that Im convinced TAPS/Paranormal state etc stole our idea hah), and have recently (the past year) have taken interest in banksters etc.


Im 27, a little out of that age bracket, but I agree with the comments in the op. I started work at 15, hard work, during HS I worked 30 hrs a week during the school year, and 50+ during the summer, I quit that job my first year of college because I got in to poker, and was very talented, made a bunch of money, opened up my own business (restaurant) that I sold, and am now doing computer security (my passion, and what I went to school for). The reason that I recently found a job during one of the worst economic downturns, is not because Im special, or that I was owed anything, or that I was entitled to it. It was because of my parents. I wasnt raised by a bunch of pussy, hippy, new age baby boomers, my parents worked their ass off, and they made me work mine off. On the weekends, when I was a kid, after soccer/baseball (of which my dad coached) I didnt go home and sit on my ass, and I definetly didnt get trophies for not winning, I had the priveledge of going to my dads shop (mechanic) and work, garden, clean, cook for my cousins and uncles that hung out, etc. I was brought up in the "old school". I was taught that the world is a bitch, and you can either be a pussy, or you can beat it into submission.



Any of you 50 somethings want to blame kids nowadays for being lazy etc (of which I agree with) you need to look at how you brought them up.




PS I got my job about a year ago, 3 weeks after signing the ownership of my business off. I was out of the industry for a long time, but I hounded the hell out of the companies I applied to, I didnt just email resumes off, keep hitting submit on monster/dice.com, I called the companies up, I hand delivered resumes to HR, I MADE them give me an interview, I wrote thank you notes after an interview, I treated the job hunt process like it WAS a 40 hour a week job.

there is a reason a leftist got elected, it is because so many of us are now self-intersted pussies. Reagan was too fiscally liberal imo.

[edit on 27-9-2009 by whistler16]


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 08:15 PM by The Vagabond
reply to post by geo1066


You either live in a very unusual area or have had the luxury of being sheltered enough to believe those few bits of media garbage you've got there.

I know these kids. I'm like an older cousin, even a big brother to some of them- I was just starting out at the end of the good times, and I had a couple really successful years to show for it even despite making pretty much every mistake that a naive young man can make, so I know a few things and I can tell them about the way things are supposed to be, but now I'm down in the dirt with these guys.

And I ain't meeting them on their momma's couch. I meet them at my union's training center, where we hone our craft and wait for jobs that never seem to come and which are usually temporary when they do come.

I meet them at phone banks where we do everything we can for our political action committee trying to get at least a small cut of the billions of OUR MONEY that our government is giving to the men who got us into this mess.

I meet them in lines in front of a security system firm where 200 guys show up to compete for eight openings that pay commission only in an economy where nobody is buying. (There was a time when I made 33 bucks an hour plus overtime, double time on sundays, and benefits- I was out on my own and making money hand over fist by the time I was 19- and now I'm jumping at the chance to be conned into a dead-end industry working for a fraud whose recruiter I catch in 3 lies in the first 5 minutes, at a company that I know will be defunct next year, because the biggest dream that reality will accomodate for me right now is to recapture what I last had back in July- sitting in gridlock on the way home from a 10 hour day, aching all over, thinkin I'll save my last few excedrin and my last few smokes for friday, and despite all that feeling absolutely glorious- like a freakin hero- just because I got to leave the house and have a life for one more day).

And I'll tell you something else about these guys, and myself. On our worst days, our depression becomes a rage, and we're starting to wonder how much longer our desperation can remain quiet. We're smarter and more able than our parents and politicians have ever imagined- ask our employers when we've got them. They tell us they can only afford 2 guys for a 4 man job, and we finish early. They can't afford to rent a forklift to load material directly to the second floor, so we run solid metal fire doors up unfinished stairs.

We put up the walls and the doors that stop angry mobs from looting the banks that screwed them. We run machines larger and more powerful than tanks. There's not a hell of a lot made of concrete, steel, or wood that we don't know how to set up or rip down. And to get our minds off a hard days work when we're lucky enough to have one, we've been known to dabble in chemistry, if you know what i mean. Most of us love this country and we'd prefer to build it rather than threaten it, but you probably wouldn't like us when we're angry.

I give it 4 more years on the extreme low end (although we could have a very impressive crimewave if this trouble lasts that long), 12 years on the high side, but if things dont get back to an acceptable level sooner rather than later, we're looking at a perfect recipe for revolution.

You take my generation, who are very angry but very hesitant to give up and throw away their hopes for the future, and you take away that light at the end of the tunnel and replace it with a whole new generation that's never known a road to prosperity beyond crime and never had anything to aim for, and you've got the officers and the footsoldiers to make up either a mafia or an army, depending on just how bad things get and just how responsible the people who dominated such a movement were.

Realistically, I don't think that's where we're going. I think things will improve slightly over the next few years, then stagnate again while America's competitors catch up, at which point the playing field will be pretty level and we will see a return to a very large manufacturing working class and a modest middle class of managers, with some social mobility but not as much as we'd like, and things will never reach critical mass. As little as I like it, I'd settle for that- all I want anymore is to know that a man can stand on his own if he's willing to work for it.

But do not underestimate the power of these young people who are now growing up in fear of becoming dead-enders, under the instruction of older brothers who came of age just in time to see defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, because how they react to the circumstances of the next decade will decide what kind of country the US will be for the rest of this century, and for that matter will decide whether or not the US will be a country at all. I know a fair share of guys who wouldn't mind being able to call the beltway crowd foreigners.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 09:15 PM by hoghead cheese
Originally posted by geo1066
I know that these current times effect everybody to a different level of degree but as far as the area that I live in, we can't get any menial labor help to even show up for work. Our local fast food resturants(ie-Taco Bell)
have had to close their doors and only keep the drive-thru open due to nobody showing up to work. Other places of buisnesses that open up in this area are short lived because they can't find any help.
We have two 'temporary work' services in the area which I surely didn't think would be able to thrive since there was so much need for full time employment in the area but they did due to the reason that I concider to be sheer laziness! I came to find out that the people that use these services for employment only do so because they can get paid daily and work whenever their heart desires.
-Here's an article on our schooling systems contributing to the fact
www.economist.com...

-I love this lady's idea and reasoning
www.redding.com...

Thirty-six years have passed and America has asked nothing of the 18- to 24-year-old crowd. Home life has changed, too. Very few children are required anymore to roll up their sleeves and apply elbow grease for the benefit of the family. Parents are busy, kids are overscheduled, many eat what they want, go to bed when they please, and most don't know the first thing about handling tools, preparing a meal, even running a vacuum cleaner. We have become a nation of largely apathetic, mostly overweight youth who have few skills beyond running personal electronic devices.


-I also love the term 'mini couch potatoes' in this one
www.dailymail.co.uk...

Scientists claim there is an epidemic of 'mini-couch potatoes' at risk of chronic health problems in later life.


-And last but not least, a kid's point of view
www.theonion.com...

Hello, reader! I am a young boy from the United States, and like most other American children such as me, it seems there is nothing I enjoy more than lazing about from morning until night, eating sweets, and wantonly disrespecting the wishes of my elders.


I don't feel that we have a problem with youth unemployment as we have a problem with youth work ethics. No matter how technology advanced our society gets, there will always be the need for menial labor.
The work is there, well at least in my neck of the woods.


You have to blame the parents also. They where stuck trying to make money and keep up with the neighbors with the best cars or the better homes etc. etc.. Also the 80's and the 90's was the decade of greed (you can say the 2000's where also). The parents where bombarded by the rich and the rich shows (remember lifestyles of the rich and famous). If you didn't have money, you didn't count. So they spent their time trying to get this money, at the same time letting their kids get raised by the atari the nintendo and later the computer.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 09:23 PM by sisgood
I think that this generation (7-18 year-olds), is gonna be quite different than what we've seen lately. I believe that most of them are going to have pack-rat tendencies and I believe that they will end up holding fast to everything that is important to them.
I'm seeing a different group of kids than I saw 10 years ago. These kids today are beginning to realize that, no, it won't be "out there" for them when they finish growing up. It's a different world today and only growing more alien. I also think the younger adults of today 19-35 are getting a rude awakening themselves. (I'm in that age group) Jobs are drying up rapidly. I was unlucky enough to be one of the millions that has been laid off. It's tough.
I do think as a result of these times that we will change the face of America. So many kids from my generation wouldn't have known hardship if they fell over it. Yes, we had trouble. I grew up in a steel family and my dad kept getting laid off so I do have a bit of an advantage now. I think that America's youth are going to gain an inner strength from all this, one that is now dying out with the earliest of the boomers. I believe that when everything is said and done that the world will have changed after this is all over. It has to.
In a way, I pity the children of today. Sometimes I wonder if they will get much of a chance to be children. I do, however, hold much more faith in them to be good leaders of their generation than most representatives of my generation. I think we are going to, as a nation, begin to look inward and realize what is truly important in our lives. Perhaps "the race against the Jones family" will finally end. There is never a winner in the first place.
I hold hope for the future... I just hope that we hold on long enough to get there.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 09:33 PM by whistler16
reply to post by sisgood


inner strength and baby boomers dont equate imo. the baby boomers are the reason why we are in this situation, they are the ones that fostered the entitlement mentality, and feminized the generation they raised.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 09:34 PM by Shadowflux
reply to post by calstorm


It is demoralizing, the worst part is torturing yourself over why you're not getting any responses. You send out tons of resumes, nothing. You lower your standards and expectations, nothing. You rewrite your resume, nothing. Put it online, nothing. Employment agency, nothing. You spend all day reading job ads on Monster or Craigslist until you can't stand to see "self motivating team player in a dynamic environment" ever again.

There's no use racking your brain, trying to figure out why you're not having any luck. Take this time to better yourself, do something you've always wanted to, learn something you've wanted to learn. In many ways, you are more wealthy than anyone else, you have all the time in the world.

For instance, I'm learning to program actionscript and make Flash games just because I always meant to and never got around to it. Who knows, maybe you'll find something new and that'll be where you get lucky.

I just keep telling myself "Well, I must be having so much trouble finding a job because I'm meant for something else", meh, who knows lol


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 09:39 PM by whistler16
Originally posted by MikeNice81
Originally posted by Shadowflux
Many young people have no problem working hard at a job they can be proud of but where do you find a job like that anymore? It's hard to be proud of the work you did at Wal-Mart when your paycheck is so small, the work conditions are mind numbing and, more often than not, the customers induce violent thoughts in one's mind.

Honestly, and you can flame me for this if you want, but I don't think it's worth selling your life away to a greedy corporation for $7.25 an hour, with no benefits, so that your meager paycheck can be further raped by taxes while whats left of it will hardly last you until the next paycheck.

I'd rather be unemployed, not pay taxes and have every hour of my life to myself.

[edit on 27-9-2009 by Shadowflux]


I completely understand these feelings. I have days where I feel the same way. I have to ask a question though. Who is putting food in your stomach when you refuse to work? Who puts shoes on your feet and pays for your transportation?

If someone else isn't paying I would honestly love to know how you do it.




Not being a douche here, Im genuinely curious; but why do you feel entitled to a job that you can be proud of? Why cant you just be proud of the hard work, and sacrifice of completing an accomplishment (even if it is helping some old man find the produce department at wal-mart etc)?


One of the biggest pleasures I had when running my business, was showing up and mopping floors at 6am before anyone else was in the building. It is sad that kids cant just take pride in whatever they are doing because they feel that they are owed more.


reply posted on 27-9-2009 @ 09:43 PM by Shadowflux
reply to post by MikeNice81


Well, I'm not refusing to work, I'd love to have a job. I think a lot of people are afraid of being "poor" because they've never been there before. I'm not saying it's easy, or even that it's enjoyable. I know that any day could be the day where things get REALLY bad, but in the end, you're only one pink piece of paper away from being unemployed and in the same position.

I just get a certain satisfaction from knowing that my time is mine and the government isn't getting any money from me.

I'm not advocating that someone doesn't work, I'm just saying that, personally, I'd rather not work than be some corporate retail slave. I've done it and every time I got my paycheck I couldn't help but think that I would have rather done something else with the past 80+ hours.

It's a difficult position we're in, slave or starve. It's up to you, I guess

I know that when I'm an old man I'm not going to look back longingly and regret all the time I didn't spend working
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