Re: Occupy America I got a great job after graduating, but, while I worked my ass off to get it, I don't hold any illusions that luck didn't play a role. There were people who may have been just as qualified, but decided to try for finance/banking instead (most of those folks are now going for jobs in my field, making the hiring process a lot more competitive). I was considering two offers when I graduated. If I had taken the other one, I would probably have been out of a job less than a year after joining (they went on a huge firing spree a year ago). Others may have worked just as hard as me, but had their field dry up during the recession. That's one reason why I feel that this statement: isn't really fair. Not all unemployed folks majored in theater or women's studies. A while ago, law was a great career path. It's now really difficult to get a job as a lawyer that is enough to pay off your student debt. Another is the sciences. A friend of mine was certain that she was set because she did BioChem. All through undergrad she had no trouble finding research opportunities. When the recession hit, a lot of the national funding and grants dried up and her offer with a research lab was rescinded. It's easy to look back and point to the jobs that are currently plentiful and say that you should have known 4-5 years ago when you chose your field, but I think that's expecting a lot from anyone, especially an 18 year old. All I have are anecdotes, which I'm fully aware are probably not an accurate picture of the economy, but there were a number of highly qualified candidates from my school that had trouble finding a job.* It's been roughly 1.5 years since I finished grad school, so most have found something at this point, but these people had no trouble finding work right after undergrad. Some are frustrated that their starting salary after undergrad was MORE than their starting salary now. There are fields that are pretty unchanged or are growing (mine, for instance), but I don't think it's accurate or fair to just blame the current crop of job candidates. My first resume was an absolute disaster for my field (thanks, Career Services!), but back before the recession an organization could afford to take a chance on me and teach me how to present myself to get a job in my industry. I'm sure you worked hard and that you deserve every offer that you receive, but this doesn't mean that there aren't folks working equally hard and getting far less. *I should note that I graduated grad school in the spring of 2010, the job situation for new graduates may have improved since then.
Re: Occupy America To any detractors... If history is to be believed the first large scale protest preceding the American Revolution were the Sons of Liberty tar and feathering stamp act agents. It's not about how the protest starts, it's how it ends.
Re: Occupy America I would be very critical in evaluating that statistic. Let me be clear - I have no doubt that YOU are accurately reflecting the stat as provided by the school. However, keep in mind, and I know this because law schools are getting sued over this right now: Schools have a very strong interest in showing that their graduates get jobs. Some schools play with the numbers, very fast and loose. I'm not saying that your school does, but it's coming to light more and more that schools haven't been very honest about job placement. In fact, some schools don't differentiate between getting a job as a white collar worker and working at Appleby's. As far as the stats go, SOME schools treat them the same. Remember, schools are in the BUSINESS of education. I also am hesitant about average and median salary stats, my alma matter for law school was roundly criticized for their 'chart' of average salaries, and voila, a couple years later a double bell curve of salaries chart came out, showing what we all discovered after graduation: a few made 90K+ and the overwhelming majority made around 45K, or less. My alma matter also didn't differentiate between law jobs and other jobs in its stats. Of course, they didn't tell you that until they were pressured into it by alumni whom were saying 'hey, wait a minute, where the fuck are all these 70K jobs you told us that 87% of your graduates get...' only to get 'well, that's not EXACTLY what we meant...' Just saying, schools have a vested interest in appearing to have high employment placement rates. How they compile those stats needs to be examined - and to be clear, I'm not picking on your school, it may well be above board. Oh, the average thing: If one person reports an income of $100,000 and the three others report $31,000, this averages to $48,000. Just saying that stats like those can be misleading, and certain schools (again, not necessarily yours) are not being as explicit in painting the real picture.
Re: Occupy America CSOM's numbers are from self-submitted surveys from students. It isn't required to report a job offer, but you are hounded 24/7 to do so. Of course I can see the numbers as a sales tool and thus an opportunity for inflation but I doubt that's the case there.
Re: Occupy America In his case and in most (actually, I think in every study I've seen) they go by median salary, not average, so in your example the median would be $31,000. I agree with most you say, and I'm willing to bet his school's numbers aren't exactly as they appear, unless the study specifically states it only included people who got jobs in their field. Like you said, they have a vested interest in looking good to potential candidates.
Re: Occupy America If you're getting a bimodal distribution, like this: Mean and median both become pretty meaningless terms, at least from the prospective of a prospective student. Rather than either the mean or the median, you have to say "bimodal distribution," and then describe the two peaks.
Re: Occupy America I feel like there's a qualitative distinction. Someone who lives in the upstairs bedroom is someone who has moved back to their childhood room for what they hope is a temporary stay while they get their finances/employment in order (long though that may take). Someone who lives in their parents basement is someone who has divided the house into "their" living area and "my" living area, and sees the basement as his own apartment. There's a reason the latter is much more pathetic, and too often describes his parents as his "roommates".
Re: Occupy America Exactly. And the classification has NOTHING to do with whether you actually live in the basement or not. You could move into the garage or camp out in the back yard, but you'll always live in the basement to us.
Re: Occupy America It's cool B1ly I live on the second floor too. I'm too much of a deadbeat to actually get a job while I go to school, and my mom is an awesome cook. Fuck it; the VA pays for my school, I get a stipend, three meals a day, and a sweet pad to crash in. Before this I worked a shitty job on campus where I was surrounded by fat women, came home to a shitty dark apartment with an angry couple who yelled at each other every day, and whatever ramen noodles I cold scrounge up. Life's been pretty good since I moved back in six months ago.
Re: Occupy America So there's a counter-tumblr (god what is wrong with our society that that is a viable term) called "We are the 53%," referring to the percentage of the American population that paid federal income tax in 2009. It's basically a bunch of conservatives doing the whole "stop being a deadbeat" shtick, and aside from failing to realize that just because you paid federal income taxes doesn't mean you paid more than the benefit you received, the thing that gets me about them is that they'll get into an indignant rage at the "welfare cheat" who gets $20,000 without creating value, but doesn't bat an eye at the bank executive who gets $11 million for destroying value.
Re: Occupy America I always found it strange that people bitch about welfare like it's some humongous monolithic organization that exists solely to give money to deadbeats. In the grand scheme of things, it's not even close to the amount that we spend on defense, pensions for public employees, and Medicare / Medicaid. Granted, it makes a sizable chunk. But even if we were to get rid of all welfare, just like taxing the fuck out of rich people, it won't even come close to balancing the budget. Frankly, we need to make a decision as a country. Are we going to be a nation of military might, or are we going to be a nation of social programs? Because there is no way in hell that we can have both. It just isn't sustainable. Unfortunately, in this current political climate, there's no chance for either happening. If you cut back on the military, you hate 'Murica and want the terr'rists to win. If you cut back on social programs, you're a heartless bastard who hates grandma and helpless poor people. If you try to have both, you're going to do neither well.
Re: Occupy America Here's a response to one specific 53% picture. I think the most relevant part for me is below:
Re: Occupy America I don't think we should hamper our military too much, but there's some cuts we just have to make. Do we really need that many troops in South Korea? And what the fuck are we still doing in Germany? Yeah, you can tell me how important it is to be stationed seemingly everywhere possible, but it just isn't. I think the complaints about welfare are that people see that as unnecessary while the other things you mentioned are seen as essential (I'm not making an argument either direction).
Re: Occupy America I have a friend who is participating in this event in St. Pete/Tampa tomorrow. This is interesting because he is rich, affluent, white, and in law school. He strongly benefits from the status quo but he's going to protest against it.
Re: Occupy America This - and the stuff earlier about CEO's being/not being 400x more valuable than the avergae worker - made me think of an old BBC article on a study by some economics think-tank: <a class="postlink" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8410489.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8410489.stm</a> (the article on it) <a class="postlink" href="http://www.neweconomics.org/projects/value-work" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.neweconomics.org/projects/value-work</a> (the think tank's own blurb on it, the actual study is in the 'publications' page somewhere) "A total of six different jobs were analysed to assess their overall value. These are the study's main findings:" Spoiler * The elite banker "Rather than being wealth creators bankers are being handsomely rewarded for bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse Paid between £500,000 and £80m a year, leading bankers destroy £7 of value for every pound they generate". * Childcare workers "Both for families and society as a whole, looking after children could not be more important. As well as providing a valuable service for families, they release earnings potential by allowing parents to continue working. For every pound they are paid they generate up to £9.50 worth of benefits to society." * Hospital cleaners "Play a vital role in the workings of healthcare facilities. They not only clean hospitals and maintain hygiene standards but also contribute to wider health outcomes. For every pound paid, over £10 in social value is created." * Advertising executives The industry "encourages high spending and indebtedness. It can create insatiable aspirations, fuelling feelings of dissatisfaction, inadequacy and stress. For a salary of between £50,000 and £12m top advertising executives destroy £11 of value for every pound in value they generate". * Tax accountants "Every pound that a tax accountant saves a client is a pound which otherwise would have gone to HM Revenue. For a salary of between £75,000 and £200,000, tax accountants destroy £47 in value, for every pound they generate." * Waste recycling workers "Do a range of different jobs that relate to processing and preventing waste and promoting recycling. Carbon emissions are significantly reduced. There is also a value in reusing goods. For every pound of value spent on wages, £12 of value is generated for society." The research also makes a variety of policy recommendations to align pay more closely with the value of work. These include establishing a high pay commission, building social and environmental value into prices, and introducing more progressive taxation. I try to listen/read more than I speak/post in this sort of debate, because I'm very aware of how underinformed I am, but there seems to be an assumption amongst a lot of more conservative people that if you can do something (become a banker with a massive salary, say) and you've obviously worked hard to be able to, then fuck it (and fuck people who didn't work as hard/smart/long as you and therefore didn't get there) - you deserve that because you played the game of life well, whereas I'm always instinctively more inclined to agree with people who want to change the rules so that as few of these disproportionately rewarded options exist. Fucked if I know a good way to do that, though. Underinformed. Jus' sayin'.
Re: Occupy America Take a look at this: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... t-20110411</a>
Re: Occupy America Also, I'm chime in on the greater issue. I think these points are spot-on and put it quite succinctly: The financial sector drains a lot more value than it creates. The main point I agree with, that has been bubbling for a while in this country, especially Wisconsin, is his second point: The leveraging of corporate size and legal power to engage in anti-competitive practices, both against competition and against labor The free market does not exist in this country any more. And, corporate size and collusion both destroy competition not through superior products or prices but by getting into bed with the government. A libertarian would shutter at the idea. Corporate size and collusion also fucks over labor in this country through myriad ways. I think the protesters themselves are not nobel laureattes but they can smell that shit stinks, even if they can't articulate it. I've heard some numbers that recent grads' unemployment figures were somewhere around 20-25% (Depression levels). The general population has an unemployment rate around 9% - and being fresh out of college with little experience and an arts degree definitely puts you near the bottom of the totem pole. I'm 23, and graduated May 2010 from a school ranked in the top 10 national universities on USNWR (don't feel like naming). So, not Harvard but up there with it. Graduated with a 3.8 with a double major in useless social science #1 and useless social science #2. Well, that was my fault, but nonetheless I was unemployed for a soul-crushing year until I found a full-time job. And I consider myself fairly smart. How can anyone else with a non-engineering degree get a job so easily just out of college? Shit sucks out there. I have plenty of friends that are unemployed. Engineering degrees seemed to get jobs straight out, but no one else did. A friend from my school with a 4.0 in economics and math took 5 months to get a job (much faster than me) --- but still. 5 fucking months? For an internship level job? Other friends took 7 months, 9 months, 10 months. Many, many of my friends are still unemployed/ underemployed. It sucks too when you are at a top school in the country because you go from being told how smart you are all the time to swallowing your pride and doing data entry or scrubbing toilets or fast food. Literally. I'm not entitled or elitist. I just think my intelligent friends have more to offer than that 35 year old obese office cunt, who is dumb as pole, who has her current job from working during boom time, and who mainly just sends emails back and forth and files shit and is grossly overpaid. This is just one example of someone I worked with as temp months ago. She actually thought Austria and Australia were the same country. Well, I'm going on a rant. I think people are just pissed in this country for several reasons. And it's coming to a head in OWS. And I for one support the movement.
Re: Occupy America ^ You also graduated in a much better time period than the current climate for recent grads. Being smart and ambitious is not enough. Realize that times have changed.
Re: Occupy America Much has been made about reluctance to make capital investments in this economy, but just as important is the reluctance to make personnel investments. I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering this spring, I'm very intelligent and I can learn anything you want to throw at me. I understand the physics that underlies 90% of consumer technology that exists today. But do I know anything specific about that technology? No. Because no undergrad program offers courses in "3G protocols" or "Firmware development targeted for C8051 architecture devices," just to grab a few keywords off some present day "entry level" listings, and it would be ridiculous if they did. These things are far too specific to include in a base four year education, and would be a waste of time and money for the vast majority who took them. Ten years ago companies would have recognized that in six months I can be exactly the employee they want, if they're willing to invest that time into teaching me the specifics they want me to know. But no one wants to make that investment in today's climate. Companies are panicking, decisions are made relevant to increasingly shorter timelines. Who cares if I can yield several million dollars in value over ten or twenty years? That's ten or twenty years down the road, the 20K investment in my training has to be paid this year. And so they don't do it. They patch the tire and hope for the best. And so I sit here and I try to pick up Java in the off chance that I stumble across a job that wants Java (as opposed to C++, or C#, or python, or any of a dozen other programming languages), I pick up the Linux command line (in case they want it), I grab a pirated copy of Solidworks (and hope they don't use AutoCad), etc. I'm shooting in the dark trying to acquire skills for a job I haven't even found yet, knowing that for every skill I invest significant time in learning, 95% of jobs I come across won't need it or care about it.