DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Represent.us - Have you seen this?

Skill position is more towards plumber, contractor, painter. And while nothing is wrong with those professions and are extremely necessary in society (Much more than something law like), they should become doctors, lawyers, or politicians.

In recent years there has been a massive shift from blue/white collar divisions of labor to personal/impersonal divisions of labor. It's not just manufacturing work. We outsource a lot of white collar work now, too. There are a lot of highly skilled jobs that are replaceable now. But you can't hammer a nail from China. I tell young kids to look for a career or trade with an emphasis on the personal (or "present" for a lack of a better term).

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Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders: “We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape”

This is Kenneth Langone, the founder of Home Depot and a longtime GOP donor. His biggest fear? Income inequality
MATTHEW PULVER


I’ve written previously about the growing fear among elites that they’ve pushed economic inequality too far. That fear is proliferating, according to a New York Times Op-Ed this weekend by former marketing conglomerate CEO Peter Georgescu. Joined by his friend Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, Georgescu warns his fellow 1 percenters that “[w]e are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape.” The column raises the specter of “major social unrest” if inequality is not addressed.

Georgescu writes:

I’m scared. The billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones is scared. My friend Ken Langone, a founder of the Home Depot, is scared. So are many other chief executives. Not of Al Qaeda, or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group from the Middle East, Africa or Asia. We are afraid where income inequality will lead.

In June, Cartier chief Johann Rupert — worth an estimated $7.5 billion — delivered the same message to his wealthy colleagues, telling them that the intensifying inequality and what it portends “keeps me awake at night.” He told his fellow elites that “We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us.” Like Georgescu and Langone, Rupert feared unrest and asked, “How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare?”

But while Rupert only mused about the prospects for continuing to hawk jewelry and the restfulness of his nights amid the tumult, Georgescu and Langone are being proactive. Georgescu writes that he and Langone “have been meeting with chief executives, trying to get action on inequality,” taking advantage of Langone’s tremendous access to business leaders. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a major CEO that wouldn’t take his call,” said a close associate of Rudy Giuliani of Langone in 2012. Georgescu and Langone are telling their patrician peers that if “inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes.” The word seems to be getting around at the global aristocracy’s water cooler, and Georgescu writes that they “find almost unanimous agreement on the nature of the problem and the urgent need for solutions.”

There is more in this article, but the first few paragraphs set the tone.
Eye-opening.

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/11/why_cons...dium=socialflow

No it's not. I'm almost 50 and nobody from my generation, when asked what do you hope your kids do when they grow up, said, I hope he is a plumber.. or she is an auto mechanic.. everybody wanted their kids to go to college, it was the surest path to "success". It was also a status thing that reflected on how well you did as a parent.. parents took it personal if their kids decided they didn't want to go to college.


I agree with that too.. when with my friends the subject of "spoiled millenials" comes up, I'm always the first to point out.. we raised them. Don't blame them.

I'm hoping it's cyclical. I think the hard-ass parents (especially fathers) of the 50s often went to far, showed too little affection, were too quick to criticize and too slow to praise.. so the effect was, my generation went too far the other way.. always praise and never criticize or you could hurt their self-esteem, always make them feel like the center of attention, etc.. hopefully your generation as you start to have kids will find a better balance.


I've talked about my job in construction... well you have only touched on one part of the problem... let me give you an example. I'm working on a project that is getting started on one of the bigger state campuses, won't say which one.

The project is going to be close to, if not over, $100 million. The project will be in the center of campus, it will include a 50 meter pool (even though the school doesn't have a swim team), there are 2 other pools, one indoor recreational and one outdoor recreational, multiple racketball courts, multiple yoga and pilate and other types of exercise rooms, 2 large weight lifting rooms, tiered indoor running tracks, a rock climbing wall that might come out of the swimming pool. It really is a world class recreational health club they are building.... for $100 million.

This same university is spending about $100 million on the other side of campus to gut perfectly good dorms to turn them into condo style suites for the students to live in...

This same university just spent $45 million on a new stadium and $20 million building the nicest recreation fields for intramurals that I have ever seen, the fields are real grass and far nicer than any field I ever played on in High School...

What are we up to now in the last few years? $300 million on recreation and luxury living? Ok, get this...

On the lot next to the fitness center, they want to build a new science building for $45 million but have to put it on hold because they don't have enough money....

You want to know why college is so outrageously expensive? Because their priorities are OUT OF WHACK!!!!

We have this problem in engineering too. Companies bring in workers outside on H1B Visas, and then lay off the american workers. Then once the Visas expire they ship the workers back to asia and have them work from there, on an asian wage level.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/disney-h1b-visas-immigration-layoffs/396149/

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/silenc...article/2561856

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers

All you ever hear from big wigs at Microsoft/Google/etc is "we need more H1B Visas!" Combined this with the class action lawsuit pending on wage supression and it's easy to see that the tech companies are just trying to hoard their profits:

https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtop...ngineers-wages/

This is a big reason why I'm trying to pivot into being more service/consultancy based. I left game dev and the volatility of that for some more stability. But I am using my clients built up over the years to work on consultancy gigs and 1099 work. It's been busy (last week I logged 50 hours before Wednesday) but the pay has been good and I feel I'm on my way to dodging the outsourcing issue. This is why I'm not opposed to things like plumbing/electrician work. It pays well and you don't have to worry as much about outsourcing.

I hope so. It's too early to say but I know I have to keep my son grounded. I grew up in a mobile home and later downtown cleveland. My son is growing up in a home better than one I grew up in. I don't want him to develop an expectation that things will come to him just because. So I have to work on that and make sure he's not spoiled. But I do give him alot of affection and he lights up when I enter the room after a day at work. He's only 7 months old so these "values" are too early to teach him. But he'll be 7 years old before I know it...



Yea alot of that I suspect is also ran by the council, who wants to drive admission rates by showing how posh and cool the campus is. The schools don't care as long as they have kids willing to mortgage their future for an education.

Your last 6 paragraphs are dead on, 100% correct.

Colleges/universities aren't in the "education" business - they are in business. It just so happens education is a small part of their business - attracting "customers" (students) is the main part.

It's easier to do with magnificent athletic facilities, all sorts of amenities - food courts, intramural courts, fancy dorms/condos. Why do they spend the money on things like that? It brings in more "customers".

Why do they offer degrees in "collegiate studies", or "recreation"? Those don't help the students get jobs - they help the college/university get "customers".

If anybody has been on a college tour with a kid looking at schools, that's how they go. They walk you through the fancy dorms, the student union, the food court, the athletic facilities, the rec center, the outdoor plazas.. then they point and say.. And we have academic buildings over there.