I've worked many jobs in my life, and until I began a PhD program, I would describe all of them as "intellectually unchallenging". Does that mean I've been unemployed my whole life? Who's going to dig ditches and lay cement?
The PhD will be in Organizational Behaviors (basically Business Psychology).
Oh, I agree that unfettered markets are not the answer, just as monolithic government control is not the answer. The problem I have with this cartoon is that Rall is making the same terrible error that most Americans make. He's assuming that everyone is qualified to chase after their dreams.
When it comes right down to it, our country will always need unskilled labor to work crap hours for crap pay. But we will NOT need a glut of cultural anthropologists, or PhDs in Organizational Behavior, for that matter. Someone will always be needed to work the shit jobs. If they're lucky, they're like the people Mike Rowe is talking about in his TED lecture: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
Organizational behavior! You and my wife should talk, as those are her precise interests.
Rall is a cartoonist in every sense of the word. Dreams and even virtues are luxuries often paid for with lowered salaries. I'm sure this is not unique to the US, either.
Well, the line for these jobs keeps moving, see. In America and Japan (and other first world countries), we keep subsituting capital for labor. soldiering and piloting of combat aircraft is being turned over to expensive drones piloted by office workers in cubicles, and horse drawn carriages are no longer a major traffic hazard. The hammer has been largely replaced by the nail gun. The most intersting example I've seen of the obsolescence of organic labor is the Turnspit:
This cartoon brings me back around the the health insurance debate in this country because I wouldn't work for a large company, chained to a computer terminal just to obtain insurance. So how do you pay for insurance out of pocket as a freelancer? You need to be one successful freelancer, or as they say die trying (If sick, go to the emergency room and leave the hospital with the bill.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 12:30 pm (UTC)You are.
Date: 2009-09-04 12:38 pm (UTC)What's your PhD in?
Re: You are.
Date: 2009-09-04 04:51 pm (UTC)Oh, I agree that unfettered markets are not the answer, just as monolithic government control is not the answer. The problem I have with this cartoon is that Rall is making the same terrible error that most Americans make. He's assuming that everyone is qualified to chase after their dreams.
When it comes right down to it, our country will always need unskilled labor to work crap hours for crap pay. But we will NOT need a glut of cultural anthropologists, or PhDs in Organizational Behavior, for that matter. Someone will always be needed to work the shit jobs. If they're lucky, they're like the people Mike Rowe is talking about in his TED lecture: http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
Re: You are.
Date: 2009-09-04 07:35 pm (UTC)Rall is a cartoonist in every sense of the word. Dreams and even virtues are luxuries often paid for with lowered salaries. I'm sure this is not unique to the US, either.
Well, the line for these jobs keeps moving, see. In America and Japan (and other first world countries), we keep subsituting capital for labor. soldiering and piloting of combat aircraft is being turned over to expensive drones piloted by office workers in cubicles, and horse drawn carriages are no longer a major traffic hazard. The hammer has been largely replaced by the nail gun. The most intersting example I've seen of the obsolescence of organic labor is the Turnspit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_Dog
The breed is extinct, for crissakes.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 07:36 pm (UTC)