This Occupy Wall Street tantrum is getting old. Just about every video of this gang includes some whiny college student, or recent graduate, complaining about the student loan debt they’ve racked up, and the lack of jobs in this economy. You have to wonder, why are they wasting time bankrupting a city, banging drums and living in their own filth, rather than finding any job – or several jobs – to make ends meet until they land something better? Isn’t that what those who came before them had to do? I know I did.
I didn’t start protesting the government until I had a couple kids and realized the kind of debt our government has saddled them with. It makes those student loans look like chump change when you consider the economic consequences.
Ben Stein, who I don’t always agree with, summed it up perfectly.
Then came Herman Cain. He said, very simply, “If you are a college graduate and you can’t get a job, you shouldn’t blame Wall Street. You shouldn’t blame the banks. You should blame yourself.”
A Daniel come to judgment. The sun suddenly came out.
The next step, I am sure, by the way, for the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd is for Anderson Cooper, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart, the trifecta of conventional wisdom’s failed liberalism, to come down to Wall Street and join the masses in demanding more of our tax money so they can all be supported as novelists and movie directors.
You poor kids. You are basically asking to be supported and taken care of by Mommy and Daddy. Wake up, kids. Wall Street is you, with all of your wants and needs and wishes, only they have the balls to go out and work for it. Sometimes they are crooks and sometimes they are fools — but you know what? So are all of us.
Listen to Mr. Cain. Shut up and get to work.
Unfortunately, with the likes of the Obama-supporting AFL-CIO ginning up violence, the president himself kinda sorta endorsing the protest, and the media’s love affair with this “movement,” I doubt this tantrum will end in the next day or two. Who knows, maybe it is just the last gasp of the progressives. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to go down swinging.
It’s just a shame all of these “educated” young men and women haven’t figured out they’re just dupes, and if they get their way, they will not only leave mommy and daddy broke, but destroy their own futures. It’s almost as if they’ve willfully fallen into the “income disparity” trap.
If you’ve been paying attention to the sorry “Occupy Wall Street” nonsense going on, you’d know that the income disparity thing is a big rallying cry. It’s actually an effective talking point. Mainly because people don’t bother to think about what it means, why it happens, or what impact is has on their lives. It just feels good to not like the rich if you’re not rich. It’s human nature.
It’s also one of the most meaningless statistics ever devised by man. Go ahead, ask a hipster why income disparity is a big deal and what they would do to fix it. 99.99% of the time they will rattle off a few things that are not caused by income disparity and their solutions will do nothing to bridge the income gap. They literally have no idea what they’re angry about or how to fix it.
Better still would be asking those kids about their GPA’s. You know, like that email that circulates every six months or so. Ask them if they’re willing to give up a few GPA points for the kids who partied all the time, or are just kinda dumb, it doesn’t matter the situation. Just ask them if they are willing to give up those hard-earned GPA points to the ones who didn’t work for it. How many do you think would agree? If they don’t agree, ask them why they believe someone who worked so hard for his (or her) money should give it up to a bunch of smelly punks keeping people awake all night and blocking the sidewalks.
Oh, one last thing – If you majored in something like basket-weaving, or some other non-lucrative field, don’t cry to me when you can’t make a living and pay off your loans. Blame the people who told you it would be a really good idea to rack up a hundred grand in debt for a basket-weaving degree. Who knows, maybe you could have spent that time learning a trade, and making money.
Update: Linked by the Poh diaries – now they’re occupying Asheville.
Update: Sentry Journal, The Sundries Shack and Scared Monkeys linked – thanks!
Tags: college, debt, dupes, income disparity, Occupy Wall Street, stupid
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I suspect that the protestors have a point. Rich people are greedy. However they are now protesting to some degree not having a job after spending 4 years in college and going into debt for a lot more then 20 grand in many cases.
Yet whose in charge? The democrats. They have been in charge since January 2007 when the recession started to rear its ugly head. Their policies continue to keep us mired in high unemployment because of two things.
Incessant harping on taxing the rich…..which are the job creators and Obamacare. Those two things along with 1000′s of regulations taking place or in the pipeline.
A progressive/communist party that has so many interests they are in bed with that they are paralyzed to move forward. This is not the old classical liberal party of the Kennedy Era. This is a new communist party that is afraid to move for fear they will upset some group that keeps them hanging in power.
Let me repeat that……
They have so many divergent power groups inside this clusterfuk of a party that they now are unable to produce any legislation. Harry Reid Stonewalling the presidents own legislation is a classic example of this.
and now this occupy Wall Street is nothing more then the lefts attempt at capturing the mojo that the tea party has. They need a cause to get them excited that they can all believe in and this is it…………
The basic underlying premise of the communist democratic party is………….
WE HATE CAPITALISM. The same people that destroyed the GWB presidency over his two wars are the same people sitting on wall street today funded by the very billionaires they propose to hate.
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One nice thing to come out of all of this is that the Socialists, Communists and Anarchists are all out in the open now. I feel like yelling ‘Tag, your it!’ and running away laughing.
I’ve also found an appropriate theme song for the “movement”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZclddLcOYYA&feature=related
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Fire hoses always worked in the sixties. Throw out a few bars of soap to the crowd first, though.
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Who forced these goobers to take out college loans in the first place? Why are they protesting in NY instead of DC where they should be? They don’t want solutions. They want a communist tyranny like the “good old days” of the Soviet Union and their slave states. Of course, the media is trying to make heroes of this miserable rabble.
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Candy asses.
Right now the market is flooded with two things: the unemployed in general, and waves of college graduates. Every job I see wants a degree; a definite “education bias” going on. 30 years of experience is not so lucrative as a degree–in anything. What I do for a (lucrative) living does not require a degree of any kind; it does require certain skills and a lot of experience. Yet, hiring managers ask for “a Bachelors degree”. I ask, in what field? Oh, anything, doesn’t matter. Really? Then why are you asking for it? They can’t tell me. And my years of experience add up to multiple “degrees”. I can do this in my sleep, I’ve already encountered all of the disasters that the “books say can’t happen like that”. I learned to PUNT–which college certainly doesn’t teach you. Sometimes life leaves the textbooks behind, and you’d better be able to remain calm and think fast.
They are the ones being courted right now, even if they don’t have the intelligence, skills, and experience for the job. So cry me a river while they hold out for an entry-level $50k per year job because they “didn’t spend all that time and money to be a clerk” or a janitor or whatever else it takes to pay the bills right now, and use that degree later when Obama is out of office and a capitalist-friendly administration is in place letting businesses do what they do–create jobs and wealth.
This is a soft, protected, naive, immature and whingy generation that’s going to have to grow up pretty fast and accept that reality exists and to survive in it they will have to live in the here and now, not their hippie daydreams. Pffffffffft.
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Part of the reason employers now ask for a degree is that government has gotten involved and told them they can’t give tests to potential employees because those tests discriminate against this group or that group. So it’s easier to just require a degree. Not that it’s right, but easier than a lawsuit.
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Liberty, I’m not sure what skill sets you acquire so your post is hard do an educated analysis on. As a rule, employers are impressed with a 30 year accomplished work record in a given field. However, in a fast changing world which demands technical adaptability, there’s also that concern about “teaching old dogs new tricks. This is something you have to sell yourself on during the interview; that you’re trainable and can learn to do it their way. Having acquired a degree demonstrates that you not only are disciplined enough to advance your professionalism, but that you are in fact open to and willing to learn. It’s understood that there are many variables that prohibit everyone from continuing their education. But you have to remember that the employer doesn’t owe you a job. After 30 years, there’s also a question of exactly how productive are you. An auto body repair man, electrician, broker, salesman, cook, web designer, manager, etc. that’s excelled in their field, should have a reputation that speaks for itself and should be able to pick and choose the job they want, even in today’s times. If not, then after 30 years, one gives a perspective that all they’ve done is earn a paycheck. It doesn’t appear that they really went out of their way to advance their skills. So the degree represents discipline, motivation, and drive.
LC, I have to question the government’s involvement in employers demanding degrees. When you state “Part of the reason employers now ask for a degree is that government has gotten involved”, would that “part” ratio be like .000000000000001 to 1?
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I’ve always done just fine without one [and without a union, btw], and racked up a good track record of walking into any unknown field and mastering it–because I’m curious, I constantly learn new things and skills, but most important: I have common sense and the ability to think fast and punt in an emergency. In the current economy, with a Biblical flood of graduates willing to work cheap (most of them), it will definitely crowd you out if you’re stuck on a $$ number. As you know, a degree is not an indicator of intelligence or work ethic (horror stories!), but it does give them a huge advantage that is not always deserved. Unfortunately, they seem to think it should be a Magic Paper that creates a job and pays a lot of money right out of the gate. I’ve seen a lot of graduates go down in flames in the real world; they can’t seem to get out of the textbooks and into THINKING and doing under pressure. The degree doesn’t mean what it used to mean, for sure. The students involved in OWS are a good example: “I have a degree, therefore I deserve a job and you’d better give me one”. Well, kids, here’s your first life lesson…..
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[...] Along these same lines, The Lonely Conservative has a very insightful piece about this temper tantrum currently being thrown by [...]
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[...] The progressive “99 percenters” are still on the march this weekend in their continuing effort to convince everyone that corporations are bad and socialism is teh awesum. Of course, many of them have no idea why they are out there. Some of them are there because a “community organizer” paid them to walk around and hold a sign they can’t actually read because they don’t speak English. Heck, even the anti-war thugs have shown up to shove around a museum guard or two, but it’s all good, right? I mean, The Man must be brought low and if that requires a little defecation on the door handle of a police car, well, then it does. [...]
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[...] The Lonely Conservative: This Occupy Wall Street Tantrum is Getting Old [...]
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I know of a few companies who don’t like to hire people straight out of college, and I’m sure there others that do the same. Experience is what matters, and sometimes you have to start out as the low man on the totem pole and work your way up to the top. A lot of the recent college graduates don’t seem to get that, and want to start out on top because they got their 4 year degree.
I have no formal education but I have a good job at a major IT corporation because I worked the low end jobs, got the experience, then progressed into better positions. And this only took me 2 years to do, and I didn’t build up any studen loan debts in the process. And I still have plenty of room to grow.
Just accept a job that may not be your dream job and prove your worth to a company until you get to where you want to be.
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