America, Land of the Unskilled and the Useless

In somewhat of a continuation on a blog I posted recently on the bleak outlook for college graduates, I want to turn everyone's attention to a glaring hole in the American workforce.


Regardless of being a college graduate or not, the American workforce has nothing valuable to offer. Let's be honest, how many of us truly have an invaluable skill set? (translation: when everyone else is looking for jobs, you will always have one)


Easy jobs to point out are doctors and lawyers. If you have this much schooling, these fields are always in demand. There will always be a need (well, maybe not a need...but a demand) to cure the sick, ease the suffering of the dying, and make life a living hell for the rest of us alive. Beyond these two jobs?


Skilled labor. Mechanics (this does not include assembly line workers pushing a button), plumbers, air conditioning repairmen, water heater installer, roofer, bricklayer...these jobs that, while you don't have to be the brightest star in the sky, set you apart from everyone else.

Who is everyone else? Below is the list of degrees and jobs that are replaceable and unneeded when times are tough:


Retail. These jobs are easiest to pick on amongst them all. If you operate a cash register, collect shopping carts, clean up spills, mop the floor, or designate yourself as a department "head" (know-it-all who doesn't know much about anything except that t-shirt comes in yellow, red, and feels like cotton but is polyester) your job is the first to go. Especially if you make more than the minimum. Your "expertise" is more of a luxury position that exists when times aren't tough. This is not one of those times.


Financial Advisors. This is another luxury position that really doesn't know a whole lot about anything but they exist when people have money to blow. I mean, how many "advisors" tell everyone to keep their money in the stock market because it will always bounce back? I'm not really sure why anyone listens to these people. Sure, it's great to know how to invest in your future but where does it begin and end? Advice is a fancy word for "opinion" and most people won't pay for it when that money goes towards school lunches and the donation plate in church.


Assembly Line Workers. These people think they've really made it big. They get a decent salary and try to live above their means. What they don't realize is someone decided maybe this guy's legs will hold up six months longer than this other guy's gimp? As soon as times are tough or your expiration date nears, you're gone. They can hire anyone to push buttons and stand up all day long.


Salesmen. Specifically we could talk about car salesmen but I'll expand it to include other sales positions (except insurace). Salesmen are basically full of shit and smooth talkers. They're paid to convince someone to fork over their money. When there is no money to be had, the weaker links will always phase themselves out. As a former sales manager, I have seen first hand a salesman go from making arond $70k a year to around $40k-$45k. That's a big drop off but hey, at least they kept their job.


"Expensive" Junk Jobs. What is this category? It's known as the Linens 'N Things and Circuit City graveyard. It's the future home of Sears, Kmart, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Target should go here too but they somehow stay afloat. These places are salesmen unto itself, they're constantly trying to convince you to pay a little more (a lot more) for stuff that's supposed to be a step up over Walmart. They try to *ooooh* and *ahhh* everyone with merchandise that usually has names and pictures of well known celebrities and the tools they endorse. You know? Emeril's cooking tools. Rachel Ray's cookbooks and ideas. Hey, there's a really neat (insert stuff you don't need's name here)...check this out, it's a (piece of shit disguised as luxury). Lots of people will overpay for neat-o shower curtains and plastic spoons when they have money. When they don't? They reuse what they have until the handle falls off...then they duct tape it back together. Hey, I haven't had a trash can since August. I just tie the trash bags to a handle near the kitchen and take it down when it gets full. Besides, who the fuck is stupid enough to pay 100 bucks for stainless steel trash cans?


I'm Sophisticated Jobs. This is known as Starbucks and Borders. These places are circling the graveyard drain. Expensive coffee and books for every subject aren't needed. Borders was somehow able to emerge as a sort of book selling giant. I guess this was only possible because libraries don't get enough funding. These places want you to drink their overpriced coffee, listen to their crappy music no one has ever heard of, and bring your laptop for the free wi-fi that's supposed to make you look like a big shot and make them look like the grand fucking facilitator. Sorry Borders, the library is free and you're the ones who chose to carry every single edition of the "Books for Dummies." Looks like you all should have read some of those books you carried, your stock is so low it's in danger of being unlisted.


Liberal Arts degrees. I have one. You know what I can do with it? Not much. It basically says I know a lot about politics and its foundations, criminology, and that I am good at analysis. That's it. If I found a job that asked specifically for these things...I wouldn't be typing this. Unless you're a teacher, undergrad degrees in History, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, English, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, Criminal Justice are going to leave you holding your dick in your hand. I wish I would've thought about that when I was in school.


Business degrees. Wait, what's that? Okay, let's be a little more specific...anything short of an MBA. You know...about business. So what? Most of the stuff learned in business class can be taught on the job. How to maximize profits? Check. How to treat employees? Check. Your piece of paper proudly declares undergrad Business majors are one step higher than the people who answer the phones, make appointments, and clean the office. Seems to me the one class taught here that gets overlooked and not enough attention paid to it is business ethics. It's beyond me the amount of people who are business savvy who steal and try to get away with it. Just so we're all on the same page, the people who do this are no better than those who take money from the cash register. So if you go into the back stockroom when no one is around and decide you can't live without that box of Kleenex and damn sure aren't going to pay for it, you'll get what is coming to you someday.

So what is an American supposed to do? Take a page out of the illegal immigrant handbook. They're willing to work any kind of job. We've been spoiled rotten and wiping our asses with silk for far too long. We all feel entitled to live like we're rich in the suberbs (rich people don't live here by the way...they live in the hilltop mansion, you know "above" everyone else) and we buy too much into what the TV is selling us.

What I'm trying to say is America doesn't make anything. We don't have anything the rest of the world desires. Our one big export remaining are the American made cars with foreign parts. And as we all know, no one is buying cars right now. Hell, no one is buying American cars even when cars are selling. We seem to be dumbest ethnicity on the planet. No one else buys our cars because the gas mileage sucks. We buy them because it makes our dicks bigger (which means you don't have one and you're compensating for it). Instead of trying to live sensibly, we constantly latch onto this idea of the American Dream that died long ago.

Let me reiterate something I just said. American made cars with foreign parts. We don't even make a lot of what goes into the vehicle, no wonder they're so expensive here! Usually when something is made in a country, it is cheaper for the inhabitants of that country (no shipping or importing costs/taxes). I'm sure some asshole is trying to think up examples of this not being true so let me point out what many of us already know. Gas/oil is dirt cheap in Saudi Arabia. Why can that product, one which can have unprecedented demand worldwide, be so cheap for them but our cars can't be cheap for us? Because we don't make everything that goes into the vehicle. We're paying retail prices for something that shouldn't be priced as such. If we bought a car straight from the factory, you would cut out the middle man and the car salesman. Even then, how cheap can a car be if it has a Japachinese engine with a Korean air conditioner, a Taiwanese CD player, and Filipino cup holders?

I am a huge advocate for post-secondary education. It only makes sense, the smarter a country is, then the more efficient it will become, and the stronger a workforce will that country possess. But our country has decided to destroy this priviledge too. Expanding your mind and thinking outside the box cost a lot of money now too. We spend a lot of time studying for undergrad degrees that don't do much for us. No, now you have to attend graduate school too and invest more time and dollars to get anything out of your education. Doesn't something seem kind of off here?

Our country decided at some unknown point that there were jobs that were beneath us. We demanded better pay and better working conditions. However, we still wanted all of our products and services as cheap as ever. On top of all that, quality suffered as a result...is anyone surprised? Since we decided we were too good to work these jobs but not arrogant enough to stop purchasing cheap products the jobs all of us demanded improvements on have been outsourced to the cheapest bidder. Our country makes nothing that is in demand worldwide and we exist for one reason...to buy the shit all the other countries make.

America makes (made) money. Our jobs are to advertise, market, and sell the cheap shit we're too good to produce ourselves. We complain about the quality while pushing Americans to buy the very products that make other countries wealthy and put our country into a deeper debt. Skilled workers will never be out of work. There are always furnaces to fix, dish washers to install, septic tanks that need to be drained, people to take care of and clients to be defended. There will always be streets to patrol, children to be educated, and people to feed.

So what is the solution? No one goes to college anymore, we all learn how to fix toilets and build houses? The solutions are to hold these companies and politicians accountable. As long as we buy crap from China made out of shit, poison, and mud then we have no one to blame but ourselves. You don't want to work on those turkey farms? Then don't cry about the people who do. Illegal immigrants aren't the problem. China isn't the problem. America is the problem.

And it's going to take more than giving a bunch of irresponsible, bad bankers (ethics class anyone?) some money to fix it. We need to change from within to fix our problems.

Americans need to let the American Dream go. It already died, we simply continue to visit its grave.