Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.$40k to start for a guy with a BA in Political Science in this economy? He has no wife, no kids, and his family paid for college so he has no debt. I think it sounds like a pretty good starting gig. Even in an expensive place like Massachusetts, it's enough for a small apartment, a good car, party money and some savings.
New York Times readers are beating up on him.
16 comments:
I know people with degrees and years of experience who would really like a $40k job right now. I bet you do, too.
The good news: the job will likely go to someone who really needs it and wants it.
The bad news: the rest of us living in MA will have to support him through our taxes via all kinds of social welfare programs
Let's start with his age and degree....no let's start with a worthless degree that set someone back a lot of money that will never pay off...really bad decision as starting point to life with a wasted fortune and nothing to show for it....so now he sits around in mom's livingroom playing with his video game while mom works dreaming of high paying job (not as good as a government "job" but still a high paying job)....humm maybe he is smarter than we are.
It's everywhere in the labor/job ladder. These self esteem monsters are insufferable. Try getting a graduated with a worthless high school diploma to lump wood and shingles all day. Yeah, he has tats,ink,'tude, but work? No thanks.
I'll just hire some non speaking 40 year old illegal spanish guy with a wife and four kids.
He'll be there every morning, we'll get along fine, his hands like mine are sandpapered, his skin, like mine, wrinkled and tanned, and his not understanding English screwup rate will be less than the American kid's drift off, late, no show rate.
I have a sister with an advanced degree who would rather continue to live on unemployment for the rest of this year than go look for a job like that one. Seriously. An insurance adjuster? She would be horrified. How... how... average.
"An insurance adjuster? She would be horrified. How... how... average.
Plus, can you IMAGINE who you would be working WITH!
Oh
MY
GAWAD!
/sarc
.
And what exactly is his "corporate" dream?
Lot's of glad handing, back slapping, drinks after work, golf meetings, expense accounts, and people who do your work for 40k a year while you worm your way up the ladder and try to run the company into the ground.
What ever happened to the NYT...it has become a joke....blogs have better writers who do more research....old style news organizations are doomed...after all what is a newspaper other than its writers and the public perception of their content. I have not paid for a newspaper in ten years...OK WSJ at the airport to kill time when I had nothing else to do.
I am from Boston Metro. When I graduated in 1998 with a BA in Biotechnology (molecular biology concentration) I stepped out into the work force right at the start of the huge biotech boom. My first job? $27,000 a year! It seemed like plenty back then to me and it is not cheap here at all, but I got by and didn't mooch off the mom, not that she could have helped anyway. This kid is a joke.
Why bother working for $40K ($30K after taxes?) when you can just pull a Casey Serin -- apply for some credit lines, and purposely default. Voila. Instant $30K.
Just like Casey, this kid's parents are the problem -- enabling his mooching/unemployment, content to let him live with them until middle age.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon attitude within his generation. The level of entitlement is off the charts.
No we are NOT entitled are not are not ARE NOT WAHHHHHHHHH!!
Our hideous boomer parents gave us too much stuff and saddled us with trillions in debt so that's why wont WORK is so is so IS SO!!!!!
The 24 year old is an idiot.
Douthat had a pretty sensible post today in the NYT. He's calling for an elimination of the mortgage subsidy.
A boomer's response:
While it's nice to see you're opposed to some corporate welfare, young man, you seem to have it in for us ancient boomers. Here you have decided to lump us in with greedy mega-corporations who are getting subsidies to export their fertilizers and cheap drugs (drugs that are NOT cheap here in the U.S.).
The purpose of the federal mortgage tax deduction is to allow homeowners to use what is usually their largest asset -- their home -- as a nestegg for their old age. You should be able to see that even a million-dollar nestegg, on which a couple is supposed to live for 20 or 30 years, through hard times & up-years, is hardly an outrageous sum.
As for Medicare & Social Security, who do you think paid for those benefits? We paid for decades. Now I'll grant that there should be no cap on when well-paid workers have to stop contributing. If the cap were removed, the government would see a healthy increase in Social Security revenues. But if there's one thing this recession should have taught you, the relatively wealthy retiree cannot depend on investments to see him/her through hard times. Many of us watched our investments tank in late 2008, & few have seen them come back to pre-crash levels. Social Security & Medicare remain safety nets, and no one -- including those who paid the heaviest price for the benefits -- should be deprived of the safety net for which they paid all their working lives. Life is fraught with uncertainty, & your plan to make it even more uncertain is about as cold-hearted as a policy-wonk can get.
You should worry a little less about your having to "underwrite cruises and tee times," as you put it, activities in which most of us decrepit old codgers do not engage. Try showing us old folks a little mercy, even if you'd rather see us occupy our free time looking up recipes for catfood casseroles.
God, I can't wait to bury this woman. First, her generation has the longest life expectancy in history. Yet she bitches about the cost of drugs needed to keep her old ass alive.
She feels entitled to use inflated home values to fuel her 30 year(!) retirement.
She also feels entitled to SS & Medicare because she paid for them. Fair enough. Except in the next breath, she demands the rich subsidize it.
Has any other generation ever had it this good? Yet she's still demanding more. Just remember that older folks have their share of assholes.
SS & Medicare are run the same as any other 'direct transfer' (i.e. welfare) program.
Other welfare programs are means tested.
Soon SS & Medicare will be as well...
I'm an medical insurance biller, I have a BS degree and I make 40K per year. This guy is truly a moma's boy and is probably lazy and hell. But who's to say. Maybe he doesn't want to be an insurance adjuster. I sure as hell don't want to be an medical insurance biller. But what the hell, the benefits are great. And yes, I do work for the government! Room for advancement.
It figures he would be a white rich kid living with his parents. What the hell he needs to work for? His family is well off. He doesn't have to clean toilets like the rest of the trailer trash does. Maybe he "doesn't want to do the jobs Americans don't want to do". Who cares? As long as he doesn't get on welfare, he can pretty much does what he wants. He's what's wrong with job market now. He thinks he's too good for a 40K gig. He'll get the picture.
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