35 Replies to “The World Owes Them a Living”

  1. Oh no, Captain! You say too much!
    There are a number of things that will cripple a country. Aside from the things you mentioned, selling out whatever industry we have to China- a country with tentacles in several places- will also destroy us.
    Just my thoughts.

  2. I’d be interested to know how a 16,17,18 year old can compete with a 30 year old ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT that is willing to work under ANY conditions.

  3. “””I’d be interested to know how a 16,17,18 year old can compete with a 30 year old ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT that is willing to work under ANY conditions.””””
    by working harder then the ILLEGAL??????
    just a thought

  4. As someone who used to work in construction, you cannot compete with illegals because they don’t pay tax, and their employers don’t pay UI, CPP, payroll taxes etc. My employer could pay me nothing and I suspect it would cost him more than hiring illegals.
    We shouldn’t have to compete with them. We pay taxes to have our government enforce the law.

  7. “The world owes them a living”
    -So say the boomers who lived far beyond their means forcing “them” to pay for it. We didn’t create the social systems that drove tax rates and debt to this level. Maybe you should spend time examining the drawbacks of how your own demographic has lived rather than criticizing those to come. It would serve you right if we can’t pay for your social security.

  8. I am surprised you can find any yutes in that age group who are willing to work at all.
    Most of them are busy staring at the palm of their hand with gizmos plugged in their ears.
    And most of them are fat.

  9. Pierce, I believe Captain has made that point. We’ve created an “entitlement” generation who can’t or won’t work for what they want. We are living with such people now.

  10. Age 16-24 – how many of those people are looking for a job? The new mantra is “stay in school . . . until you’re 30”. 50% are working – what percent are actively seeking work?
    (We are probably producing a bubble of non-useful university or college educational degrees)
    I wouldn’t be pleased to be young now. The middle class has pretty much been sold out – manufacturing has gone, never to be repatriated. Debt has been racked up. People from other countries have been imported to do jobs that “North Americans won’t do”, who have a better work ethic than I did when I was young.
    We’re not really heading for good times.

  12. Erik Larsen asks the key question: how many are actually seeking employment? 52% unemployed? Hah, chump change. Why, the unemployment rate in the 3-5 year old age category is 100%. Unmitigated disaster.
    But leaving aside Eric’s question, the New York Post — a putatively conservative publication — manages to provide a one page tissue of economic fallacies. All this stuff about “creating” jobs, “tax credits”, “economic recovery plans”, “if every company would ONLY hire ONE MORE person, yada, yada, yada, and not a single reference to the No. 1 reason for yute unemployment — the minimum wage. The government created price floor.
    As Mises and Rothbard and “the Austrians” say: on the unhampered free market there is no such thing as INVOLUNTARY unemployment.
    There is never a labour surplus when wages rates are determined on the free market by free persons contracting freely with other free persons.

  14. Boo yeah, Aaron.
    My brother’s friend went to China and trained a man to take his job. That still baffles me.
    My younger brother shared a class with a Chinese student who expressed great puzzlement for safe and well-compensated labour. These are the people we are selling out to. Nice.
    This isn’t the only thing but it is one cause of the problems we are facing.

  15. Muslim Migrants in Canada – Victims of Undeclared Racism and Discrimination
    Recently, the verbal and mental abuse of Muslims has reached to another high level by judges orders by allow nonMuslim steal Muslim busines in civil court with no ground and do not allow Muslim to sue them too or ask for more than $15000 downpayment in one case to sue Nonmuslim in civil claim law because nonMuslim is big company think they can get away or change all laws intentionally by their hate remark and corrupted lawyers
    how come court never allow any trial get opend to see who is behind this mess and how come some judge order without trial against Muslim to see real evidence and based on what their lawyers said if lawyers said employee asked this motion nad employee said that is lies that lawyer made up stories why not judge open trial to see who tell the truth and why people get allow to do so obvious illegal in job stealing using their lawyers’s law not Canadian law and why judge helped them more than help Muslim in Canada since 2006 and after sep 11 in Canada.
    some law in Canada is ridiculs and not up todate with today multiculture society and made for nonMuslim only and thier culture.
    Blame it to Harper to continouse in all public to support only any body except Muslim here.
    why people like Wendy Earle and Michael Kimber and Robert Balcom and Gorden Currie as lawyers work here in Canada
    how judge know who tell the truth and who does not??? when one group spend more than $ 300,000 with small Muslim company who has not capacity of paying that much legal fees how human right study this matter
    how Harper can order to investigate this matter and keep illegal lawyer aside and put good compnay back to work again?? in fast ways
    http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.com/immigrants.htm
    http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/683088

  18. “With all of them majoring in fluff and art history and political science and peace studies…”
    How do you know they are ALL majoring in above? Evidence please.

  20. We don’t have that problem in Western Canada. The young people here are still willing to work very hard, but only if they get paid for it. It’s the immigrants that don’t want to work hard. Sure, they’ll do jobs that a lot of locals don’t want, but most of those jobs consist of sitting on your ass. I’m pretty sure I’ll never see an Asian on a drilling rig, in my lifetime.
    The best workers in North America are from Saskatchewan. The Newfies used to be pretty close, but have gone downhill a bit in the last few years. The Mexicans I’ve dealt with seem pretty good, but they don’t like to hurry. They’re consistent, though. Africans aren’t worth the powder it would take to blow them to hell. Their sense of entitlement is hard to comprehend. I shudder to think what we’re getting ourselves into, by bringing “workers” from Africa.

  21. With all due respect, I don’t buy the “young people are lazy” explanation.
    Look at the graph- participation rates were also low in the mid-50’s and early 60’s- does this suggest that the young people then (mostly pre-boomers) were lazy?
    While it is true that many people of the “echo/millenial” generation might have an aversion to hard work, I’d suggest a better (and more measurable) explanation may simply be opportunity- the economy (obviously) sucks right now for job hunters- the unemployment rate in the US is over 10%. Moreover, huge numbers of permanent, well-paying industrial jobs have disappeared in the past 2 decades (which is why men have been especially hard hit). The increase in the number of university degrees has devalued that level of education, meaning both higher unemployment rates for graduates and more incentives to obtain graduate degrees for competitive advantage. Finally, practical education (trades, etc) have been generally de-emphasized in high school, leading fewer students into stable skills jobs.
    Simply put, the economy is increasingly divided between knowledge professionals and menial service workers. With most young people being unqualified for the former, they tend to get stuck in service jobs- which are inherently less stable.
    But whatever the cost, this obviously has severe implications for the ability of those young people to fund the entitlements demmanded by their parents.

  22. With all due respect, I don’t buy the “young people are lazy” explanation.
    Look at the graph- participation rates were also low in the mid-50’s and early 60’s- does this suggest that the young people then (mostly pre-boomers) were lazy?
    While it is true that many people of the “echo/millenial” generation might have an aversion to hard work, I’d suggest a better (and more measurable) explanation may simply be opportunity- the economy (obviously) sucks right now for job hunters- the unemployment rate in the US is over 10%. Moreover, huge numbers of permanent, well-paying industrial jobs have disappeared in the past 2 decades (which is why men have been especially hard hit). The increase in the number of university degrees has devalued that level of education, meaning both higher unemployment rates for graduates and more incentives to obtain graduate degrees for competitive advantage. Finally, practical education (trades, etc) have been generally de-emphasized in high school, leading fewer students into stable skills jobs.
    Simply put, the economy is increasingly divided between knowledge professionals and menial service workers. With most young people being unqualified for the former, they tend to get stuck in service jobs- which are inherently less stable.
    But whatever the cost, this obviously has severe implications for the ability of those young people to fund the entitlements demmanded by their parents.

  24. @ dp I hired a crew of Africans (mostly Senegalese and Congolese) for my treeplanting crew. back-breaking work in harsh conditions that would break most people.
    I went head to head with the crews from Sask (mostly hired out of Briercrest for some reason) and we beat them every time.
    The Africans thought they were in paradise- piece work with the chance to make $250 a day. The Sask crews were good, really god, no doubt, but they could not match my boys.
    What makes you an expert on generalizations? Don’t you think your statement “Africans aren’t worth the powder it would take to blow them to hell. Their sense of entitlement is hard to comprehend” is a bit of a generalizations?
    The Sask crews I worked with were almost all racist and would never speak or look at the Africans, but I don’t apply that trait to all Saskoids or Western Canadians.
    Maybe you’ve never seen an Asian on an oil rig because they can stay in Asia and do that kind of work. They come here to use their minds, not their muscle.
    And why would you want to blow Africans to hell?
    You sound a little angry.

  26. Briercrest? That’s a bible school. You sure picked a good crew to go head to head with.
    Tree planting is child’s play. Ive seen little 16 year old girls do that job. You never carry more than 50 lbs. The worst part of that job is riding in those big vans with inexpeienced drivers.
    I wonder how many seedlings ended up growing? I bet those Africans dumped every one of them, as soon as nobody was watching.
    You seem to consider yourself a hero of the civil rights movement chumpdawg. You sound more angry than I.
    I don’t want to blow africans to hell. As I said, the powder would be too expensive.

  27. Oh my God, I missed this jewel.
    Posted by chumpdawg: “but they could not match my boys.”
    That’s how he referred to his crew of Africans.
    Are you insensitive, or just retarded?

  28. Just wondering what percentage of young people are employed in the armed forces in the States.

  29. 30 is the new 18. I’ve got two nephews in their 20’s that work part time and have social lives that dominate their work ones.
    I guess we can always continue to import our doctors from India and South Africa.

  30. the reason I couldnt get a job in my teens was the length of my hair. or as the scowling foreman at the long gone (heh heh!) kernahan lumber put it ‘ya look like a woman’.
    so what is the excuse in 2009? temp agency won’t give them enough hours? my tenant says the same thing and he’s my age.
    welcome to the new world order of outsizing and downsourcing!
    LOL !!!

  31. oh, and a reminder to all there is a standing offer of 10,000 dollars to the person who can explain how a person can get a job without experience so that they can get the job so they can get the experience to get the job.
    the MAJOR workplace flaw I encountered in my ENTIRE working life was the reprehensible practice of demanding years and years of experience. jeezuz murphy, I even remember an interview in the late 80s. they wanted 3 yrs experience on the IBM AS 400. which had only been around for 3 years. in other words, to get that particular yob I had to be in an organization that, wait for it, picked up the 400 the moment it became available.
    whut utter insanity. how in blazes does *anyone* get a god$%#m job anywhere in the face of this absurdity?
    I have pondered this more than any single work related question. an unsolvable catch-22. I guess my handicap was I didn’t get picked to clean the blackboards in grade 2 so that I could get picked to collect the assignments in grade 3 so that I could get picked to hand them out in grade 4 so that I could get picked in grade 8 to help the school photographer and on and on and on.
    its like the kids in developing countries that desperately need to get into the ‘right’ primary school in order to line up their post sec. education and get that career path started. otherwise a failure in life by the age of 5.
    sheeeee-it. the insanity of it all.

  32. I’m sure that laziness is part of the problem but why is the first world the place for the rest of the world to ‘get a job?’

  33. -So say the boomers who lived far beyond their means forcing “them” to pay for it. We didn’t create the social systems that drove tax rates and debt to this level.
    ~Pierce
    Neither did the “Boomers” create these social systems.
    The social systems in Canada were created by the previous generation, the so-called “Greatest Generation”.
    Do a little research before you do a lot of hating.
    Socialism has been taking hold and increasing in the western world since the end of WWI and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.
    Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas, and Pierre Trudeau were not Baby Boomers.
    Hitler, Stalin, Máo Zédōng, and Mussolini were all born in the 19th Century along with Karl Marx.

  34. curious_george: its easy, start at the bottom, when I was 14 I was pushing broom in a warehouse, soon driving forklift, then order desk, then purchasing, then inside sales and before I left for university at the age of 19 I was in line for the warehouse managers job. Want to know the secret?
    Work hard, be early, do what you’re asked, be eager to learn new skills, put some brain power into jobs that may not need it to be “acceptable” and you’ll blow past the 20/30 somethings who have been standing still for 10 years (and bitching). I was making more at 18 then others that had been their for 10 years, people should get paid what they are worth, not what they need/want.
    The bigest falicy is thinking that manufacutring jobs deserse to be in the middle class. If your #1 job skill is “Lefty Loosey, Righty Tighty” maybe you deserve to be poor, and can’t be shocked when your job gets replaced by a robot, then by people in the 2nd/3rd world, which will soon be replaced by robots.

  35. At the restaurant I work at part-time, we’re sitting on hundreds of resumes and receive many more each day, mostly from the demographic being caricatured in many of these comments. I’m sure a lot of the service industry is experiencing the same glut of “able-bodied workers.” Not all of us are entrepreneurs folks, we’re willing to work but, like, there’s a recession going on. But maybe it really is a conspiracy of lazy, young people who prefer no money and no opportunities over making a living. The insights abound on SDA!

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