Category Archives: Labor

UPDATE II: A Statistic That Tells A Lot About America’s Youth (Deifying Kids)

Economy, Education, Etiquette, Family, Labor, Technology

I’ve said it often: “The millennial generation will be another nail in the coffin of flailing American productivity.”

Via the senior producer at Varney & Co (Jake Novak) comes this startling statistic: “70 percent of all the jobs filled since Jan. 2010 have been filled by people 55 and older.”

Imparted in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable,” what I’ve gleaned from my sources in the high-tech industry, by way of an example, is that this “workforce—comprised as it is of local and outsourced talent—is manned, generally, by older people with advanced engineering degrees. The hi-tech endeavor is all about (older) Americans and Asians uniting to supply young, twittering twits with the playthings that keep their brainwaves from flatlining.”

UPDATE I (9/27): Deifying Kids. Excellent point is made by Tim Malone, on the Facebook thread. How often does one meet upstanding middle-aged parents, and in waltzes The Kid, who bears no resemblance to the parents in terms of manners, work ethic, alertness, etc. Malone makes the best point ever, and that what must be implicated is liberal (and I include most conservatives here, other than hardcore homeschoolers) progressive, child-centered upbringing, in which the parent cowers before the deity, The Child. Moreover, I so often see hardworking parents who seem to think that making the child learn what they do (be it bird-keeping or working on car engines) is below the miserable child’s dignity. Why do you think “your teenager can’t use a hammer”?

UPDATE II: Thanks to his old-school dad, who insisted that he hang out in the garage, doing every single thing the old man did there—from fine wood-work to fixing plumbing and installing window frames—my old man does everything in the house. Saves tons of money; is done to perfection, but it does mean that renovations take years. So what? Check out “the shower that Sean built,” his first tiling job ever:

Fem Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action, Business, Feminism, Gender, Labor

Everyone is shocked—shocked—that “[a]mong the most distressing” information buried in the “jobs report for August” was the following, as reported by Economix’s Catherine Rampell:

The share of men actively participating in the labor force — that is, working or looking for work — was at an all-time low. Just 69.8 percent of all men over age 16 were in the labor force in August, compared to a long-term average of 78.3 percent since the Labor Department began tracking these data in 1948. The share has been falling pretty steadily over the last six decades but has declined sharply in the last few years.

All manner of explanation is floated for the increasing marginalization of men in the US labor force. Nary a mention is made of the gender-centric policies that govern both state and big-business bureaucracies.

Every one of us knows men who slog under these conditions. All too well do we know too that the ladies are getting a leg-up.

In certain fields—say, electrical engineering—women are so rare that no matter how mediocre an engineer the woman is; the men around will be expected, if implicitly, to valiantly compensate for her intellectual deficiencies. Their reward? She-devils that not only get credit for work they have not done, but begin to believe their own hype.

Understand, this is not to say that there are no outstanding females in the applied sciences; of course there are. But many more are the outstanding men who’re being sidelined to showcase what are, on average, mediocre women.

Speaking of a performative contradiction, Catherine Rampell, the reporter, should look to her left, on the perch at the Economix blog. What is the ratio of men to women among the “Featured Contributors”? Two to three.

See if you can spot the trend wherever you go. I do.

South Africa Squanders Gold

Africa, Democracy, Economy, Labor, South-Africa

As we head into possible hyperinflation, the demand for gold has remained consistently high, yet gold production is down in South Africa. Ever wonder why?

A doff of the hat to Albert Thompson for the Al Jazeera link reporting that “At least seven protesters [were] reportedly killed when police opened fire on miners at South African mine.”

Jay Taylor, who broadcasts and invests in the tradition of Austrian economics, is up on all things gold and South African. I will be talking to Mr. Taylor on Tuesday, August 28.

Gold is a girl’s best friend. Austrians in economics will be gold bugs and/or general metalheads.

UPDATED: A Leg Up For Ladies

Affirmative Action, America, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Labor, Law, Regulation, Sport

Like the “good” conservatives that they are, the women at Fox News support Title IX regulations. I heard quite a few celebrate the fact that the US has sent more women than men to the 2012 London Olympics.

“There are to be 269 women and 261 men on the team.”

This skewed outcome is a result of gender-based affirmative action.

Writes Phyllis Schlafly:

Title IX regulations, which impose gender quotas on sports for institutions that receive any federal money. …
Title IX regulations have forced educational institutions to eliminate men’s teams until the number of men and women on sports teams is the same ratio as the number of men and women enrolled in academic classes. In the numerous colleges that are now 60 percent female in academic enrollment, Title IX requires that men’s teams be eliminated until only 40 percent of the athletes are men.
Title IX quotas have caused the elimination of all but 19 men’s college gymnastics teams. This deprives boys of the scholarship incentive to take up gymnastics as a sport in high school and takes away the competition needed to improve their skills in college.

Granted, they are sweet. Look at these eager young faces; the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory, the brutal regimen required to become the best, the irrepressible spirit that compels athletes to submit to the grueling grind. It is all so very exhilarating.

But c’mon: if you are a basketball fan, for example, how can you settle for the inferior game the women play? For me, the high point of the competition is the American-dominated, testosterone-fueled, always magnificent, 100-meter men’s dash.

Forget it ladies: You are not in this league.

UPDATE (July 15): In reply to thread on Facebook:

“Yes, MM, sports is important. I have been a runner for the last 22 years—and not because my (Israeli) high- and middle school instilled the love of the effort in me. And, as to who would I rather watch play: Kobe Bryant for the U.S. men’s basketball team? Or the equivalent woman star (whose name no one, but her parents, cares about, b/c she is incapable physiologically of matching the thrill of watching Bryant)? The answer is obvious. The reality cannot be tweaked by central planning. Not should it be legislated away.