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What If You Still Cannot Find Work?
“Economy, in Sweet Spot, Adds 313,000 Jobs. It May Get Sweeter.” — Washington Post
So, here I am, in month five of not working. Failed to land a client on my first pass at consulting. While my wife found a job after 15 years of not working, After 25 years of working, in the greatest recovery in that 25 years, I cannot get anyone even to interview me. I have taken advice. I have networked. I have submitted lord only knows how many resumes. I have changed my cover letter for jobs. I have met with a dozen people in “informational interviews.” Either I don’t hear back, I am told “someone else is better qualified” for jobs I could do in my sleep, or I get “You have a strong resume, and you are going to find something.”
Now, I am not using this thread to complain, for am I actually in better spirits than ever, all things considered. For one thing, I am almost walking normally. No, this thread is more about the general idea of those left behind. In a world gearing up for the millennial crowd, folks like me are left out. Oh, in theory, my age is a protected class, but age discrimination in the workplace is alive and well. Overqualified just means “you are going to cost too much.”
What I think conservatives need to acknowledge is that we have a culture where working is needed to survive. We value work, and rightly so. However, the fact I cannot find a job to hire me, even stuff I am very overqualified for, shows that “get a job” is not much of an answer. Sure, we can say that no employer owes anyone a job. But, what do we say to someone who plays by the rules, did nothing wrong to lose his job, and cannot find someplace to take his 25 years of experience? I have heard already all the advice on how to obtain a job. It has not worked. LinkedIn has a group full of people in my age range, and they all have similar tales to tell. So, I am not owed a job, and I have to earn it. Great. I did that and the outcome was losing a job I had earned, and thus far, no one will offer me another chance. Not even a chance at an interview.
What I expect to see in this thread, is lots of advice on that boils down to “well you must be doing it wrong.” Classic conservative response, which is to blame the person with no job. Believe me, I am doing everything I have been told to try, networking, and I am working hard, daily to launch by business, TalkForward. I do think that is my long term right path. I just have to try to support my family in the meantime (another conservative “should”).
I’d like to avoid the advice giving, and concentrate on what our message should be. Right now, we tell people they must work hard to get ahead, that they have no right to a job, and that if they work hard, they will get a job and succeed. OK, gang, I am a model of a hard worker, I am not lazy, I give my all to every task I am assigned. I worked from the bottom of an organization to the top. And it was taken away for nothing I did wrong. I am doing everything conservatives have told me to do, and I am not getting the American Dream. What do you tell someone like me, other than “Life is not fair?”
I feel if we cannot message better than this, then the Republican will always be the second party. I fear if we cannot find a message to address people like me, the left will always win in the long run, because it has a message to address it.
Published in General
And which is why we have the problems we have today. Hayek was brilliant in showing the dangers of socialism, calling it the “road to serfdom” and then he advocated an easement for a 6 lane highway to serfdom.
@bryangstephens, have you been watching Tucker Carlson? He has a segment on Wednesday called Men in America. It is very interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlnhxQly2Wg
And the second part, if you are interested:
I think his point was that the broader “conservative” movement feels this way. I don’t think the election of Donald Trump necessarily proves this, but maybe it does. Certainly the embrace of Donald Trump suggests this. I’m not trying to shift to a discussion of the president, which hasn’t solved the problem addressed here on any count, but I do think that it’s been said a thousand times that Trump spoke to the man left behind, which was certainly the rhetoric of FDR while expanding the social safety net, and that’s why he won the White House. The message was crafted to reassure Trump voters that they wouldn’t be left behind as we all “made America great again,” which is really about making individual people feel secure.
That said, we won the Cold War by any measure. We are in a new era now with a different struggle, as struggle is perpetual.
Is the GOP able to figure out how some got left behind? Can they fix it or are they just going to give them a cut of the Keynesian graft, rent seeking, and largesse? Then throw in the identity politics.
That’s a good idea.
Tutoring at high schools, too. I made $50+ an hour as an English tutor in East Cobb, though you’d have to figure out what the going rates were in your county. Tutoring is scheduled in off hours when you’re not searching for other things, and it could help pay a bill or two if you get a few students.
Hook into a PTA or contact your children’s old teachers. Tell them of your availability. Find the special education teacher at the area high schools and just send an email with credentials.
There are also tutoring websites where you can post your profile for special ed, which might help. (This is how we found our kid’s calculus tutor.) They handle the money and then pay you, but they also help connect you to kids.
Well, I refer back to my first comment on this thread, which is that there isn’t a political solution to this sort of problem. All political solutions end up hurting in some way, i.e. anti-age discrimination laws simply make it harder for people who are “protected” to get hired in the first place.
I personally wish that politicians would be much more honest with constituents and just tell them this–no, we can’t fix it, and there are no guarantees, even if you do everything “right”–but Bryan is correct when he says that sort of statement isn’t a “selling” message. It’s certainly not how Trump sold his services, which is why I say he is evidence that the conservative movement has taken a left turn. (This is simply an observation. I’m not trying to stir anything up.)
After all, Trump said quite plainly throughout his campaign that he was going to fix it all for everyone, and putting the Clinton element in the election to one side, that’s honestly, in my opinion, what a lot of people wanted/want to hear/believe.
I don’t agree with this. The economy could freed up a ton. Health insurance needs a unique fix, but the rest of it is the Fed and economic cartels.
The Cold War was not about the validity of the welfare state, a decision that had been made by western governments prior to the start of the Cold War.
I guess you could have the government get out more, but that’s not what government does. Looking at the Tucker Carlson clips earlier in the thread, I know men are facing a crisis in this country. I see issues in young men. But what do you want the government to do about it? Kill the Fed? Okay. Stop propping up economic cartels? Okay.
Those aren’t the problems for people like truck drivers who will lose jobs to automation (via the Carlson clip), and I don’t think they caused Bryan’s unemployment either.
But I don’t have any problem having politicians talk about those things as long as they don’t offer panaceas for all that ails the general population.
Same thing with globalized labor. We have to switch back to a deflationary economy. Better living through purchasing power. This is how man profited off of progress for all of time prior to 1914.
Of course no one knows what I’m talking about.
You could phrase it that way, sure. I think the people instinctively want and often prefer is to hedge against ruin. That is how these programs are sold and I think to the extent they make people feel secure about it they can be considered successful. Peace of mind is no small thing. It is why people buy insurance to begin with.
I don’t think its “undeserving poor” its the abuse of other people’s kindly sentiments.
My grandma was a true believing new deal democrat and got fired from a social welfare office because the mom of a connected politician came for free stuff, and she denied it because the family was wealthy.
There is a line to be drawn here, both in fact and rhetoric. Not everybody is hank reardon’s family, as real and true to life as they may be.
I think this is why the reform plans have failed. They took something that was the ultimate hedge against ruin and made them risky. Humans are fabulously risk adverse.
Nassim Taleb is very good on this type of thing.
I do not assume rationality in the politics of policy. I assume herd instincts and the overriding desire of politicians to do or promise what will get them elected or re-elected. What I think happened is that socialists or quasi-socialists had temporary control of every advanced economy and installed welfare programs and then every other politician was too afraid of the electoral consequences of removing them to even try.
Going welfareless in today’s political realities might well be impossible now, but it certainly used to be possible and I don’t think it would be anything like a paradise. Would people with bad luck/ideas/morals end up worse off in the short term? Absolutely, but family, friends, churches, and charity groups would step in as they had in the past to prevent the worst of things, especially for those most deserving of the help.
Looking at the long term — if we had avoided the mistake of welfare statism 100 years ago I think about 85% or so of the population would be significantly better off and the remaining 15% would probably be a little better off as well because a rising tide lifts all boats. The lower 15% of society would not be receiving their guaranteed benefits, but they would have access to the charity and cast offs of a richer society that also pays much less in taxes. And just think, what would a Bill Gates do with just 20% more money from the reduction in taxes?
He is.
In large corporations it is ignorant HR Nazis dictating pay and the resumes hiring managers can see. The post modernist aka communist have taken over HR and are now using it as a platform to highjack the whole corporate culture. With the exception of Lawyers there is no profession I despise more in corporate American than HR Personal (Recruiter by far being the worse sub section of this catigory). There are great ones but they are few an far between and dont come close to negating the harm HR Personal due to the bottom line let alone people.
Here’s a thought – why does the government need to be the provider of charity? I would rather see us return to churches, fraternal organizations, and other collaborative groups – maybe something like credit unions or a co-op.
Taking care of people is good, but government is not good at it.
Right now, what I want is to see Valiuth (You will admit to being a welfare statist & you will like it) & Rufus R Jones (Have you accepted Ludwig von Mises as your lord & savior?) locked in a cage match…
It’s unmanageable. It’s all theft and graft. Ultimately, it runs down the economy.
How do they do this in countries where the central bank can’t “help” without crashing the currency?
Comment of the week.
Where do I sign up for the pay-per-view live stream?
Fair point, I agree that was the original definition of “socialism,” but words shift their meaning over time. The word “liberal” once meant someone who opposed protectionism and supported free trade and laissez-faire economic policies, and still does in much of the world, which is why some libertarians call themselves “classical liberals.” However clearly the meaning has shifted in modern American politics.
As for “socialist,” even the Chinese Communist Party has largely abandoned the idea of state control of the means of production, they have learned that they must permit private ownership and a relatively free market in order to have the strong economy they need to (a) become a world power and (b) keep the people from revolting against their one-party rule. I doubt Bernie Sanders would nationalize our corporations even if he had the power to do so. The dream of modern progressives is that if they leave corporations in private hands, they can regulate and tax them to their heart’s content without killing the golden goose that is supposed to pay for all the extravagant social welfare programs they promise. That is modern-day socialism.
That’s more or less the textbook definition of economic Fascism.
True. I recently read an argument that North Korea is better understood as a fascist state rather than a communist state.
Another big difference between fascism and communism in the interwar period was that fascists advocated national socialism while the communists at least claimed to reject nationalism under such slogans as “workers of the world unite!” However Stalin realized he had to invoke Russian patriotism in order to win WWII, and all the communist governments of Asia were founded on explicitly nationalist lines. The Chinese Communists, for instance, are and always have been Chinese nationalists. So yes, they better fit the textbook definition of “fascist.”
Joseph, I wish someone would get your message over to LinkedIn. Every time I visit my email, I realize that from what LinkedIn has to say, there are 179,000 positions available for me to find work right here in San Francisco. For me and me alone.
If only someone could get them to stop.
Yep these philosophies are rather circular. If you go too far to the Left, you meet the too far to the Right paradigm. And vice versa.
These two ideologies, communism and fascism, are really just slightly different takes on the same path toward totalitarianism. I’ve noticed that many people, including here on Ricochet, get lost, deep in the weeds of these differences.
It’s just a matter of how you cede control of your life to some larger entity. No matter which way you come at it, from which side of the political spectrum, it ends up (if you think of the below chart as a circle, not a line) at totalitarianism, call it communism or fascism.
Which I still think is too simplistic a model, but the idea is there.
I think there’s an essential difference between totalitarian states and democracies. Nations like Canada, France, and Sweden to varying degrees may have larger welfare states (and higher taxes) than American conservatives approve of, but never the less they remain multiparty democracies with free and fair elections, free speech, a free press, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law. That’s vastly different than a state ruled by a single party, whether that party is called communist or fascist or something else.
No. They are both left.