For the entire Obama presidency, Americans have told pollsters that the country is on the wrong track. To be fair, the same view held sway for the last two years of the Bush administration (although the skew towards the wrong track was not as pronounced.) If one listens to president Obama and the Obamacrats, there is no rational basis for that view. After all, they tell us, the economy is growing and we have more jobs today than we had before the start of the recession six years ago. So why three quarters of those questioned say the country is heading in the wrong direction?
Here is a few paragraphs from a story in today's New York Post business section that gives a good part of the answer:
Despite Friday’s unemployment rate dropping to 5.9 percent nationally, New York City is still home to the dead-end kids.
Half of the city’s 600,000 recent college graduates are either underemployed or out of work, according to New York Fed researchers.
Most of this 50 percent are working in jobs they are overqualified for — no college degree required — and that are often low-pay, part-time and without benefits. It’s a vast jobs wasteland out there for this Millennial generation.
Just imagine spending years saving to pay for your child's education. That gets followed by having the parents and the child borrowing extensively to pay for the remainder of the cost of that education. Then comes the payoff: over half of the college graduates are either underemployed or out of work. Tens of thousands of dollars and four years get spent for the degree, and it gives no real benefit for half of the recipients. Does it really matter whether your waiter can solve differential equations? Do you care if the nurse's aide understands Russian history? When was the last time that the sales assistant in a clothing store quoted Shakespeare to you?
But it gets worse. The problem is not just that graduates with degrees in unmarketable subjects like women's studies or French literature cannot get jobs. No, the problem is that many graduates with degrees in business or computer science or other supposedly highly marketable areas also cannot get jobs. And the problem persists even into graduate schools. A recent study found that fully half of law school graduates were not practicing law five years after graduation. Those lawyers not only spent four years and lots of cash on their undergraduate degrees, but they also spent three more years and heaps more money on law school. Nevertheless, over half of them had left the legal profession after just five years. These students did not go to law school just for fun. They went in order to be lawyers. Oh sure, maybe ten or fifteen percent would have moved on to something else if there were jobs available in law, but there aren't.
America has an entire generation that is being denied the chance that we all have take for granted since the Second World War, the chance to enter into a career that will ensconce a person firmly into the middle class. Is it any wonder that that generation as well as their parents who have to watch this disaster unfold in slow motion think the country is on the wrong track.
But don't worry. Obama tells us all is well. He has not plans to remedy the situation; he won't even acknowledge the problem.
Here is a few paragraphs from a story in today's New York Post business section that gives a good part of the answer:
Despite Friday’s unemployment rate dropping to 5.9 percent nationally, New York City is still home to the dead-end kids.
Half of the city’s 600,000 recent college graduates are either underemployed or out of work, according to New York Fed researchers.
Most of this 50 percent are working in jobs they are overqualified for — no college degree required — and that are often low-pay, part-time and without benefits. It’s a vast jobs wasteland out there for this Millennial generation.
Just imagine spending years saving to pay for your child's education. That gets followed by having the parents and the child borrowing extensively to pay for the remainder of the cost of that education. Then comes the payoff: over half of the college graduates are either underemployed or out of work. Tens of thousands of dollars and four years get spent for the degree, and it gives no real benefit for half of the recipients. Does it really matter whether your waiter can solve differential equations? Do you care if the nurse's aide understands Russian history? When was the last time that the sales assistant in a clothing store quoted Shakespeare to you?
But it gets worse. The problem is not just that graduates with degrees in unmarketable subjects like women's studies or French literature cannot get jobs. No, the problem is that many graduates with degrees in business or computer science or other supposedly highly marketable areas also cannot get jobs. And the problem persists even into graduate schools. A recent study found that fully half of law school graduates were not practicing law five years after graduation. Those lawyers not only spent four years and lots of cash on their undergraduate degrees, but they also spent three more years and heaps more money on law school. Nevertheless, over half of them had left the legal profession after just five years. These students did not go to law school just for fun. They went in order to be lawyers. Oh sure, maybe ten or fifteen percent would have moved on to something else if there were jobs available in law, but there aren't.
America has an entire generation that is being denied the chance that we all have take for granted since the Second World War, the chance to enter into a career that will ensconce a person firmly into the middle class. Is it any wonder that that generation as well as their parents who have to watch this disaster unfold in slow motion think the country is on the wrong track.
But don't worry. Obama tells us all is well. He has not plans to remedy the situation; he won't even acknowledge the problem.
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