US FIscal Policy

Captain Buzzkill said:

If you think that teachers should be able to teach, no matter what the kids life is like outside of school, then you obviously haven't studied any inner city statistics.

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I think you completely misunderstood my point. I was giving examples of the kind of abdication of responsibility by parents that I believe is the problem, not endorsing those views. I accept it possibly wasn't clear.

Ubereil said:

But why don't they put in effort? I've come to believe pepole who call unmotivated pepole lazy do so because they don't know the answer to that question and never bothered to try and answer it.

I'd try and answer it for you but because of my flu I'm too unmotivated. Instead it woud be interesting to see why you think they don't put in the effort. Learning to understand different points of views and all that.

Übereil

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I think it varies significantly between people.

A frequent cause is lack of confidence which is a self fulfilling prophecy, people have no confidence so don't work hard so fail to achieve so validate their lack of confidence etc.

I think another frequent issue is people believing that they should have a right to a fulfilling or exciting job, people who think that they're creative and shouldn't have to apply themselves to the dull stuff. Unfortunately the world needs an awful lot of people doing the dull stuff and only a small number of talented people being creative.

I think there's also lot of poor impulse control, weak attention spans, lack of willpower and general short sightedness and inability to make long term effort for a distant reward.

Personally I don't see most forms of laziness as being something that should be indulged though. If it's a lack of confidence, force people to apply themselves and they'll start to gain confidence. If it's misguided sense of personal ability, force them to knuckle down and accept their limitations early.

It's trickier with adults than with children but motivational profile can be learned if the consequences of laziness are sufficiently challenging.

I am definitely not in agreement with Ubereil in this aspect. I hate people who complain they have such a crappy job in Sweden. I remember a farmer in Vietnam. She had lost her leg on a mine, she worked 15 hours a day on the field to support herself.

I feel it is completely ridicules when someone from a country like Sweden who clean 8 hours a day and earn 100 times more than her keep complaining.

I actually have a good ( ok it is not good in practice ) idea. Why don't we swap places between the two people above for one year? Let's see if they'll still complain after they get back.

There are also people who say they are so skilled but still can't get a job? really if you are so skilled as you say WHY, can't you get a job? perhaps you need to improve some more to be attractive enough to get hired? besides a lot of internships are offered you could use to prove your worth……

GothicGothicness said:

I actually have a good ( ok it is not good in practice ) idea. Why don't we swap places between the two people above for one year? Let's see if they'll still complain after they get back.

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At the least I've always thought it would be a good idea to send the long term unemployed off to third world countries to do humanitarian work or risk losing their benefits.

There are also people who say they are so skilled but still can't get a job? really if you are so skilled as you say WHY, can't you get a job? perhaps you need to improve some more to be attractive enough to get hired? besides a lot of internships are offered you could use to prove your worth……

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In fairness I have known a couple of people absolutely bust their balls trying to find any job rather than be long term unemployed but despite their best efforts they've found that employers take one look at their cv and know that they're only going to leave as soon as they can. That's the minority though, most of the time it's people having overinflated expectations

In fairness I have known a couple of people absolutely bust their balls trying to find any job rather than be long term unemployed but despite their best efforts they've found that employers take one look at their cv and know that they're only going to leave as soon as they can. That's the minority though, most of the time it's people having overinflated expectations

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Well, I don't know about the situation there… but are they willing to take any job? We have an obscure situation in Sweden, where we don't have enough workforce ( neither for high-paying or low-paying jobs) , and a high unemployment. The best examples are people coming here to work picking berries or taking care of children or such a things, which the unemployed locals don't want……

Besides if you really can't get anything… in Sweden you could always take a course or study something, which can give you an employment. That is obviously a problem in countries where such a things cost money though. Also I want to make clear, I respect people IF they are trying their best and are willing to do some things which are a bit tough.

The persons I can't stand are those that complain but don't try or make it sounds like they have such a horrible work situation than in comparison to the majority of the worlds population it is still really good.

D.s. I have worked with cleaning, graffiti removal, sorting postcards, and letter licking. The pay wasn't good either. Granted it was only for part time jobs during studying...... but still.. just so someone will not say you have no idea what you are talking about you spoiled %¤#%¤#¤#

Benedict said:

I think you completely misunderstood my point. I was giving examples of the kind of abdication of responsibility by parents that I believe is the problem, not endorsing those views. I accept it possibly wasn't clear.

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Haha...fair enough. I had a limited time to post an answer, so perhaps I didn't read it as closely as I should have.

As far as the rest of the conversation goes, it's interesting to see what it's like in Sweden and the UK. It's not terribly different here, and it seems to be a function of industrialized nations, especially ones like the US, where one of the national past-times is self-gratification.

What I wonder is: Where does this come from? If these attitudes weren't here 30, 50, 75, 100 years ago, how did they develop? Were these attitudes always here, but just not as obvious?

Captain Buzzkill said:

Those immigrant populations tend to do well in school because they generally come from poorer backgrounds, in countries that have less personal freedom. The norm for those who exist in a low socioeconomic class is to respect and fear authority, and value education and hard work.

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The norm for those who exists in a low socioeconomic class who immigrates, maybe, but the third social class otherwise tends to be quite hostile to intellectualism, and they tend to have no experience of higher education. The modern trend is that social class 3 parents don't expect more of their kids than making a living for themselves.

In poorer countries the third social class tends to be good at encouraging their kids to work hard to be somebody (like they never had the opportunity to be), though. On the other hand they tend to have no experience of higher education, which sends double signals (it's good but don't trust what your ivory tower teachers say!).

Captain Buzzkill said:

Placing the onus of responsibility solely on teachers is not only wrong, but it allows parents to abdicate their responsibility to raise their children to value education and respect the authority of teachers. Teachers shouldn't have to "put up with" childrens' shit; they should be able to discipline chilldren within the school environment, and they should be able to alert parents to their childrens' misbehavior, with the expectation that parents will do their part to correct said behavior, instead of launching some kind of crusade to have the teacher fired, or filling a lawsuit against the school district. If you think that teachers should be able to teach, no matter what the kids life is like outside of school, then you obviously haven't studied any inner city statistics, which conclude time and time again, that students under-perform, no matter how much money is thrown into the school district, no matter what the teacher quality is in school. It's because of how dangerous and chaotic their lives are, the lack of positive social structure and role models, absent or neglectful parents, and a host of other issues that have nothing to do with the school or the teachers.

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While I agree to an extent, it's also dangerous to have a system based on the assumption that parents will always do a good enough job. We need to have some way of ensuring all kids learn the basics required to function in society (teaching responsibility and respect of others, in particular), and school's the ideal place for that since all kids go to school.

But to quote a friend of mine: "I'm educated to lead learning, not to be a psychologist/socionom. Nor a police/bodyguard, for that matter." It shouldn't all be up to teachers to save children when their parents aren't doing what they're supposed to.

Übereil

You have no idea what you are talking about you spoiled %¤#%¤#¤# . Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Don't know about the UK, so I probably shouldn't put words in Benedict's mouth, but we have the same situation he's describing here in the US. Hiring managers are being extremely picky since there are so many applicants for any position (even the unskilled stuff). If you're even slightly underqualified, you won't get the job because there's bound to be somebody in that stack of resumes that is a better fit. If you're even slightly overqualified, you won't get the job because they assume you're just looking for something to pay the bills until you find a job more appropriate to your skills. These days, you've got to be an exact match.

In the technical fields, it's even worse. Hiring managers are looking for exact matches--you have to have experience in exactly what they're doing. In other words, a manufacturing engineer with experience making some consumer product out of steel would not be considered for a job making automotive parts out of steel, even though the experience is relevant and directly transferable. Sometimes the hiring "wish list" of experience is so detailed and extensive that nobody will meet it, and it seems the HR folks are perfectly content to keep waiting until Mr. Perfect turns in an application.

Makes me wonder what the company is up to. Are they posting the job, just so that they look good for "creating jobs," and they're picky because they technically don't need the position, or is it their Christmas list for a perfect Steel Widget Confabulator, and as soon as they find him, they'll shit-can the guy that's been doing the job until now?

Neither, IMO.

They don't get credit for creating jobs until someone gets added to the payroll, so it's not option one. For that matter, most hiring these days seems to be done on the sly anyway because HR doesn't want to get buried in half-a-million applicants.

Option two is a little more possible, but (at least from my sightlines in manufacturing) I think it's more a case of things simply not getting done at all rather than looking to "churn the roster". Steel widgets either aren't getting confabulated, or they're getting confabulated exactly as they have been for some time because nobody knows what all those blinking lights on the machine mean and they're screwed if anything goes doink. Which might explain why they can afford to be so picky--sure, there's many other tasks that need doing since everyone is dramatically understaffed these days, but the only iron-clad justification to add to payroll is that we'll eventually not be able to confabulate steel widgets unless we get some bastard in here that knows exactly what all those blinking lights mean because he ran the exact same machine over at the competition a couple years ago.

For some reason, that second paragraph made me laugh out loud. Two of my favorite words are "widget" and "confabulate."

I liked your job title, so I ran with it. Probably a Forrest Gump run, all things considered, but restraint is fer pussies...