Hey, don't got a job? Want a job? Well, gosh darn it, there's a reason you don't have a job. It's got nothing to do with there being more than four unemployed workers for every job opening. Nope, it's you. You're a moran, see, who simply lacks the brains and skills to get a job. Or at least that's what Preznit Hopey Changey basically sez, saying that training folks for manufacturing jobs that don't exist is going to cure the jobs problem. I mean, that's always worked in the past, right? Never been a boondoggle for politically-connected private school operators who rake in billions in taxpayer money, load students down with oodles of unpayable debt, then the government ruins their life for the rest of their lives all for the benefit of fat cat Wall Street types who run big corporatized trade schools with glossy ads that teach nothing, nosirree, that's *never* happened. Instead, Preznit Hopey Changey's jobs program is gonna get manufacturing jobs to come back here from China because... because... because he's got Magic Negro fairy dust to sprinkle all over it, yo!
And oh yeah, as JzB sez so often: WASF.
-- Badtux the Waddling Penguin
That's certainly Republican of him. He certainly hasn't caught on that using the R's playbook gets him no respect from anyone.
ReplyDeleteWas a time when we had training programs. They were called apprenticeships and were run by trade unions.
ReplyDeleteBusinesses today want everyone to show up fully trained - and use their own nickel (and then they "train" them to do it "their" way). Compare commercial flight training for US carriers to the "foreigners" (just as an example)
Why is it that the first thing corporations cut (after employees, of course) are the budgets for Training and R&D ???
... and yeah, they don't want to support public education through taxes .... just cuts into those bonuses, eh??
Oh, yeah. "Talent waiting to be tapped," that's me. All I need is training. Never mind that I have a Master's in electrical engineering, and 20 years of employed experience as an IT professional followed by another 20 years as an independent contractor... until the bottom dropped out. When the economy was good, I had more calls than I could handle, from respectable companies large and small; I was literally turning away work. Yeah, job training is exactly what I need... if I want to go to work scrubbing toilets.
ReplyDeleteThere are jobs. People just don't want to do them. For example, restaurants here in my are begging for help. They cannot find cooks or servers. One new restaurant just opening up held a well-publicized job fair today. They had 50 openings for cooks and servers. Eighteen people showed up. Seventeen of those were hired on the spot. I don't know what was wrong with number eighteen. If you're holding out for the six figure job you had before the Bush recession started, you may be waiting a while. If you're willing to work in meantime, there are jobs.
ReplyDeleteWowie, Lenny, Obama was talking about manufacturing training, so cooks and wait staff are manufacturing now? Shall we classify McDonalds steamer operators as "industrial jobs" because, well, they do "manufacture" hamburgers on the spot?
ReplyDeleteThe numbers don't lie -- for every job opening, there are four people who need a job. So even if your restaurant hired all 50 people they were looking to hire, there'd still be 200 people left out in the cold still looking.
Regarding your restaurant's particular problem, it's probably because their pay sucks so bad that being a homeless bum eating garbage out of the bins in back of restaurants is more attractive. It's called the Iron Law of Wages -- wages will go down until people refuse to work for them because they'd starve to death. If you're to be homeless and starve to death anyhow if you apply for the job and get it, why apply for the job?
Which is what annoys me about the Austrian idiots and their notion that unemployment is just a voluntary vacation. "All you have to do to get a job is ask for less money," they say. But a) there is a minimum enforced by the iron law of biology -- you aren't going to accept any wage for less than required to avoid starvation and homelessness, because if you're going to be a starving homeless bum, why bother working for that privilige? And b)wage doesn't matter anyhow because employers aren't hiring because there's no demand for their products -- U.S. GDP has been flat or declining for the past four years, as I've pointed out previously businesses have a fiduciary duty to have the least people on staff necessary to meet demand for their products and indeed could be sued by their shareholders if they hired people while demand was flat -- so it's bullshit to start with, every unemployed person could lower their asking wage to $1/hour and 300 people out of 400 still wouldn't get a job.
- Badtux the "When did burger flipping become manufacturing?" Penguin
Where the hell do you live, Lenny? Cooks and wait staff openings and only 18 folks showed up? Are you kidding or did you hear this from someone who heard it from someone who heard from Rush Limbaugh? In my region (western N.C.) it is about standard for at least 100 people to show up for one advertised job. If it's a special skill job such as nursing, 100 applicants for the job is about standard.
ReplyDeleteBTW, you can't BUY a job as a waiter or waitress in this part of the state. I guess it's the great health insurance that comes with those wait staff jobs that make them so attractive.
Sheesh!
BAD TUX - as usual, your posting was spot on! Thanks for your consistent good work.
Joan, yeah, I was tempted to tell Lenny, "give me a source for that story in some reputable publication -- not Rush Limpdick, Faux News, or World Nut Daily -- or you're full of shit." But he was full of shit even if the story was true, because even if each and every job had been filled, there was still 200 more people who need jobs who would still be out in the cold looking for one.
ReplyDeleteI understand that math is hard. But right-wingers seem to not even understand basic arithmetic.
- Badtux the Numbers Penguin
Right wingers find very good paying jobs based on their inability to do basic arithmetic.
ReplyDeleteYeah, WASF.
JzB