Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[crazy canuck]

Any oligarchs who happen to pass by must be laughing their ass off.  Because these protests are not just slightly misdirected, they are self-marginalizing.

Exactly.

[DGuller]

Any oligarchs who happen to pass by must be laughing their ass off.  Because these protests are not just slightly misdirected, they are self-marginalizing.

Teabaggers also started off as a joke.  Who's laughing now?  Nobody, of course.

[Ideologue]

Ide, law school was not hard work.  The articles and the years of being a junior lawyer after law school - now that was hard.  Both in the sense that it was hard to get such positions and it was hard work once those positions were obtained.  Looking back on it, law school was the easiest thing I ever did.

And one day you can be ruler of the Queen's Navy.

But just so we're clear it's not like I expected hard work to end.  Or any work to end, for that matter.

I think we're sort of arguing past each other.  "I want a job."  "Work hard!"  "Where?"  "At your job!"  "What?"

To the extent we are arguing past eachother it is based on the fact that you are upset that you paid for an education that didnt immediately result in gainful employment but then you at times deny that you think an education should be a guarrantee of such a thing.

Well one thing I think you're overlooking is how my education locks me out of a lot of lower-end jobs at the same time it (putatively) opens up doors to higher-end ones.  If the higher-end ones are in short supply, it's difficult (and not just because of arrogance) to go back to waiting tables, but also because prospective shit-job employers realize I'm not in it for the long or even medium haul and could be out by the end of my first shift depending on whether or not I get a phone call.

[crazy canuck]

Any oligarchs who happen to pass by must be laughing their ass off.  Because these protests are not just slightly misdirected, they are self-marginalizing.

Teabaggers also started off as a joke.  Who's laughing now?  Nobody, of course.

I thought the teabaggers started out as a large grass roots political movement protesting government waste and taxes and became well I am not sure what they became.

How is that similar to the wall street bunch.

[Ideologue]

Any oligarchs who happen to pass by must be laughing their ass off.  Because these protests are not just slightly misdirected, they are self-marginalizing.

Teabaggers also started off as a joke.  Who's laughing now?  Nobody, of course.

I thought the teabaggers started out as a large grass roots political movement protesting government waste and taxes and became well I am not sure what they became.

How is that similar to the wall street bunch.

They're both dumb and disorganized a little laughable?

[crazy canuck]

Well one thing I think you're overlooking is how my education locks me out of a lot of lower-end jobs at the same time it (putatively) opens up doors to higher-end ones.  If the higher-end ones are in short supply, it's difficult (and not just because of arrogance) to go back to waiting tables, but also because prospective shit-job employers realize I'm not in it for the long or even medium haul and could be out by the end of my first shift depending on whether or not I get a phone call.

I am not pursuaded by an argument that says that an education has rendered you unemployable.

[crazy canuck]

They're both dumb and disorganized a little laughable?

One can get complete idiots elected.  The other are just a bunch of idiots.  It is true though that the word idiot can be used in a sentence describing both.

[Malthus]

Ide, law school was not hard work.  The articles and the years of being a junior lawyer after law school - now that was hard.  Both in the sense that it was hard to get such positions and it was hard work once those positions were obtained.  Looking back on it, law school was the easiest thing I ever did.

Getting an articling position was like a bizzare lottery. The insanity of it in Toronto was made manifest by the fact it all happened in a single week - that is, *all* interviews etc. took place over one week.

Students scuttled like roaches from one office to another. They all had more-or-less similar resumes touting various extra-curricular activities and reasonable marks, and who got what position just seemed the luck of who clicked on the interview - I got my position, I kid you not, because I had an interesting tie, and was able to explain it (it had an Escher print on it).

So I can't classify getting a position as "hard work", at least not to me - more like winning an odd lottery. Now getting hired back, that was hard work. 

[Ideologue]

Well one thing I think you're overlooking is how my education locks me out of a lot of lower-end jobs at the same time it (putatively) opens up doors to higher-end ones.  If the higher-end ones are in short supply, it's difficult (and not just because of arrogance) to go back to waiting tables, but also because prospective shit-job employers realize I'm not in it for the long or even medium haul and could be out by the end of my first shift depending on whether or not I get a phone call.

I am not pursuaded by an argument that says that an education has rendered you unemployable.

It doesn't help one's chances.  I've been turned down from a few jobs around town because of my J.D., although it's possible that being honest and saying that I was still looking for employment more commensurate with my education and experience may have been the actual decisive factor; I could have lied, but 1)lying is wrong and 2)didn't believe such lies would be plausible, because of my J.D.  (And I've gotta mention the J.D., otherwise there's a huge gap in my work history which, again, could only be covered by lying, and in this case colorful and hard-to-believe lies, like "I was caretaking for my cancer-ridden mother.  Here's a photoshopped picture of me by her grave.  Oh, shit, did I say photoshopped out loud?  Well, I'm proficient in Photoshop, as you can see."

Also, as you phrase your argument in terms of "competition," do you accept that some or many people graduating will fail at that competition, leading to serious economic, and often physical and spiritual, dislocation?  Do you assert that--either one will do--this is a just or necessary situation?

[Oexmelin]

Because it is illustrative (symbolic perhaps?) of a deeper problem that explains the total inefficacy of these protests: the lack of understanding of that which is being protested.

What would be an efficacious protest?

[Ideologue]

Because it is illustrative (symbolic perhaps?) of a deeper problem that explains the total inefficacy of these protests: the lack of understanding of that which is being protested.

What would be an efficacious protest?

Chav-like.

[Jacob]

I can tell you when I worked through high school on sod farm it had nothing to do with who I knew.  It had to do with the fact that I was the biggest strongest fittest kid they could get for the job...

The I didnt get anywhere because I dont know people in high places does wash for me.  Mainly because of my own personal experience.

Do you not think the need for strong fit kids has something to do with it as well?

I mean, what if they don't need any strong fit kids at all? Or what if there were a hundred strong fit kids, but only one job on the sod farm? Don't you think the sod farmer might pick his nephew over you if there's only one job and his nephew hasn't been able to find any other job?

[DGuller]

It is a fact of life that successful people always underestimate how lucky they were to become successful, and unsuccessful people always overestimate how unlucky they were to be unsuccessful.

[Jacob]

Regarding the rest, I think there is a distinction to be drawn between the misery caused by how scewed up the US health care system is and other causes.  The misery caused by a failure to provide adequate medical coverage despite the fact they spend more per capita then anyone else is, imo, a different issue.

I am focusing on the Ide's of the world that think just because they paid for an education that they should be living the good life and since they are not they should get a refund.

I think focusing on Ide's flippant comments misses what seems to be the real issue, namely that a variety of factors are screwing over a larger segment of the American middle class more severely than it has in the past. It has been claimed for a while that the poorer are getting poorer and that the trend of improving quality of life for the majority of the US has been replaced by one of decline.

Is it true? I don't know, but I think the question of whether it is is much more interesting than making fun of Ide.

[Jacob]

I'm sorta midway. I do have the impression that the incomming generation "has it harder", at least here in Ontario, and I think this has to do with changes in the way the economy is structured - it just seems that the economy has lost a lot of those lower-middle-class type positions that one could get with a high school education. Its "haves" and "have-nots" now more than it used to be, and the "have-nots" of course outnumber the "haves" ...

I dunno about kids these days being filled with a sense of entitlement - I've disagreed with CC on this issue before - I well remember in the '80s thinking that the baby boomers had the most massive entitlement complex around: they could, and did, simply assume that a university degree got them a job - whereas, as we all know, this wasn't true for us. 

As to whether lawyers have it better or worse specifically - well times are tough all over, but they were equally tough in the mid-90s. I do think clients are more demanding now.

Yeah, I have the same reaction.

I'm not saying it's incredibly harder. I don't know. I'm reasonably okay in my own little bubble.

I mean, I know people who got into the video game industry even two or three years after me had it harder than I did, and the ones coming in now much much harder, while the people who started out a few years before me are way better off; but whether that maps to society as a whole I don't know.

But it seems people are claiming so, and I hear enough consistent anecdotes that I'm ready to believe there's something to it.