Summer with mom and dad

New York Times article about college kids whose plans to work at unpaid summer internships in Manhattan, or studying abroad, had their plans crushed because their parents can't afford it, and they have to live at home with mom and dad doing nothing, or even worse, working at some crappy prole service sector job.

This will no doubt be a schadenfreude moment for some readers.

Comments

[Richard Hoste hbdbooks.com]

I did study abroad last year with about 50 other students. They were form all over the country. The whole program was white except for one Chinese girl. People who do that sort of thing are Swipples with too much money. I remember telling myself when the economy collapsed that less people will be able to do study abroad/unpaid internships and being happy.

[PA]

If you don't like NAM immigration, you should be happy that American kids are working at "crappy prole service sector jobs."

[roissy]

HS, would you rather be encircled on all sides by white proles, or by the orc hordes?

[Turambar]

"This will no doubt be a schadenfreude moment for some readers. "

This really isnt fair of you- the temptation is too great.

The Obama supporter can't find a job in the Obonomy? A Tufts's Peace and Justice studies major is unemployable?

Well on the bright side maybe he will stop wasting his parent's money and switch to a useful major with a career track.

[Ned]

The sense of lost entitlement that just oozes from some of these little vignettes is appalling. My favorite is the poor little princess who has to ride with her Dad to her crummy cable TV job at 7 AM. Well, boo-freakin'-hoo! Actually, this kind of thing may be good preparation for what they will face after they get their degrees in political science or art history and end up working at the local call center or Walmart.

[Brutus]

the brats should be told that any lousy job is good life experience

[miles]

"HS, would you rather be encircled on all sides by white proles, or by the orc hordes?"

Exactly. Sigma.............SOMEBODY has to do the burgers+fries and the landscaping. Id rather have upstate regular white and black kids doing this than Somalis and MS-13 Salvadorians. Every society that ever existed had to have some manual labor performed. We all agree (I hope, I honestly wonder about some of us) that slavery is wrong and that we should pay what the market bears for these activities to be performed, even if it gets to be 9 bucks-an-hour. Even at $9 an hour, its still much societally cheaper to have a white/black kid from out on Long Island do it in the long run than to allow a illegal from the thrid world to do it who eventually brings 10 potential welfare recipients here with all the attendant crime that will come one generation down the line from that (and votes for sincere leftists not establishment approved).

This will probably give some of those little snobs their first real taste of the "real world" and a work ethic anyway. Its not shnaudenfraude, its good for them. I try to keep in mind that robotic and technological advances will make many of these jobs be automated during the next century anyway or will allow a couple of guys to be able to do what five guys do now, etc.

[Turambar]

It looks like the worm may have turned, and rather quickly too if commentors are to be believed, when you read the Times blog roomfordebate
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/what-is-a-masters-degree-worth/

All the professionals pretty much concede that the MA is worthless, although one says:

"Universities are, after all, wonderful, magical places, and learning something new is the greatest of pleasures. My friend married his fiancé, never used his M.A. degree in any professional way but had the satisfaction and joy of having read a great deal of French literature at somebody else’s expense. What is so bad about that?"

From societies perspective its not so good a deal!

"SOMEBODY has to do the burgers+fries and the landscaping."

That's fine. I suggest that you are not allowed to start a political blog unless you have made mode than $70K a year at some point in your life. Ilkka and Coyote we need. Misc, angry feminist grad students not so much. They should confine their activities to giving out extra dipping sauce packets.

[Ned]

Although most MA's are useless, there is one area where they can get you extra cash. From the New York City teachers website:

Salaries are based on prior teaching experience as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees. As of May 2008, starting teacher salaries range from $45,530 (bachelor’s degree, no prior teaching experience) to $74,796 (master’s degree, 8 years teaching experience). Teachers who already have a master’s degree but no teaching experience will start at $51,425.

...

Most other teaching programs have similar rules.
So right out of the box, the MA gets you almost $6000 extra pay. True, that's not a whole lot, but compound it over a 30 year teaching career and you're well into six figures. Actually, as my teacher friends have told me, this is a bit of a racket. It is debatable if a couple years of grad study improves your ability to teach middle school or high school history or math or English or whatever, but maybe so. But most teachers do not get master's in their fields of instruction. They get masters degrees in education. So instead of learning more history, for example, they study how to teach history in academic ghetto education departments. Usually these courses are taught at night or in the summer and consist of little more than lessons in education trends and political correctness (not surprisingly, according to my friends, diversity education is a big topic). Teachers take these courses so they can get master's degrees and qualify for extra pay. Can't say that I blame them, but who's the real winner here?

[sabril]

When I was a boy, it was pretty common for teenagers -- even from educated white families -- to take low paying service jobs and earn extra money.

When I was a senior in high school in the 80s, I worked part time in a bakery and earned $4.50 an hour. If you walked into a sandwich shop or pharmacy, it was pretty common to see a classmate behind the register.

Now it seems all those jobs are done by brown skinned foreign born adults.

I agree with the other posters that it's probably better for society to have all those jobs done by white teenagers. The advantage to employers of using brown skinned foreign born adults is they get people willing to work longer hours for less money and who are less likely to quit.

But it seems there are costs to society of using such labor which are not born by the employer. For example, the employer is not supplying health insurance. Which is no big deal to the white teenager since his or her parents would pay for health insurance regardless. However, our foreign worker and his family are probably using medicaid and/or the emergency room to impose their health care costs on society at large.

I suppose economists would call this a "negative externality." And of course the irony is that if a business produces such a "negative externality" in the form of air or water emissions, liberals are quick to jump on it as such.

For lack of a better phrase, it seems there is a lot of "human pollution" going on in the world.

[Lugo]

"When I was a boy, it was pretty common for teenagers -- even from educated white families -- to take low paying service jobs and earn extra money."

Exactly right. It was common, and considered character-building. But then I, too, was in HS in the 1980s, and it seems things have changed a lot...