Unions exist for the singular purpose of improving conditions for their members. Their purpose is to use whatever means necessary, at whatever time possible, to get the most money, greatest benefits and the best working environment the employer is capable of providing.

It's not the union's job to make decisions about the financial stability of their employer, hold off on using strategies because they aren't "right," or follow the orders of non-members. In fact, doing those things would be literally the opposite of what they're supposed to do.

This is like complaining about Nike making too many shoes.

"Work harder" in JonC's sense is the only meaningful definition of "work harder" in this context.

Brian, we're ****ing lucky. You, me, Emon, Darth and Detty. We're lucky because we own all the means to production we'll ever need. We have all of the capital to make an atrocious amount of money, and the rest is covered by skill, the luxury of time and random chance.

None of this applies at all to anybody else ever.

There's not a damn person who's going to pull himself up by his bootstraps, buy a $10bn manufacturing plant and start cranking out SUVs. Not engineers, not designers, and certainly not any assembly line workers. Nobody's going to invent the next lightbulb. Even if someone did, he couldn't afford the $50k patent attorney, so he'll just **** something up on his application and Siemens will own the whole thing on a technicality. Nobody's going to start making the next must-have billion dollar hand tool because banks aren't going to lend someone money for a metal lathe. And even if you did get off the ground, companies have patented every retarded goddamn thing imaginable because they want to leech you dry before they'll risk new competition.

This **** just doesn't happen anymore. Reality is even worse than Atlas Shrugged.

I suppose I have a different american dream than you do. I don't need a billion dollars, or even a million. So I work in software, that seems to be doing okay for me so far, but none of the rest of my family does and they are doing fine. I have two sisters and a brother. All left home at or 18 years of and either before or after graduating high school. We all graduated, some of us with better grades than others, none of us with a penny to our names. By no means were we raised in the slums but we grew up in a mobile home in a particularly poor area. Our childhood wasn't really hard for us (well ignoring the alcoholic father) and we definitely weren't starving but we were at the lowest level of middle class or the highest level of poor, not sure which.

Can we pretend for a while that graduating high school is an attainable goal for most people in america these days?

My brother's got a union job doing maintenance on facilities and vehicles for a local port authority. He's making decent money and seems genuinely happy.

One of my sisters have been in and out of work and getting government assistance and free schooling for a year or two. She lost her last job when the employer ran the business into the ground and disappeared before giving everyone their money. (By the way, at that job she was in a union and they were absolutely no help in this situation.) WA unemployment put her through a course in web design at the local community college and later a welding course. She liked both and did well in both but as you can imagine neither really prepared her for real work. She now has a job that pays her about 20% above market rate but provides no benefits (the extra pay is supposed to allow her to pay for her own medical insurance). She's in a rental house with her boyfriend and also seems genuinely happy.

My other sister works at a Honda dealership doing bookkeeping or something. She's in her final quarter of college (she took out loans to pay for it) and will likely be able to find a job at least somewhat related to her education. She is married and has medical insurance through her husband's business (he does construction contracting). She is stressed a lot of the time because of school and work but she's generally happy and smiling.

I don't know how you measure success. If you won't be happy until you're a millionaire and you think the rest of us are like that, too, well, I don't know what to tell you. But I would say that my family is very average and if you ask any of us whether we think the system has let us down my bet is that all of us would say no. It's been there for us when we needed it (me, too, I lost my job somewhat recently and had to spend a month or two on unemployment) and so far doesn't tax us into oblivion (quite yet).

All your relatives work for someone else. That's not the American dream.

"life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement"?

Okay wait, what? The american dream is for everyone to own their own business?

The American Dream: To own your own property.
That's it, that's all that really matters when you get down to it, and most people have achieved it. Less sweepingly and more accurate, it's to own land, which most people can't do, but that's getting even more archaic.

-"The American Dream" wasn't developed in the 1950s for American children to strive for, it's far older and is an advertisement for europeans to come settle the raw untamed land and develop it, something that's impossible in Europe.

You guys got it all wrong. The real American Dream is to live in a place with no cats:

You sire win the thread.

I was learning a little but but for some reason I got the feeling it was nearing the end of it's life.

Meh, google "define american dream" -- clearly there's no consensus here but for me it's not owning land (which is a joke anyway considering property taxes which if you don't pay they take your land) and it's not being a billionaire.

It seems rather silly to try to describe the aspirations of approximately 300 million people in a single a statement.

Anyone who has the ability to get a PHD in psycholinguistics has more than enough resources to determine whether this absurdly specialized degree is of great enough demand to be of any kind of worth. If a person wastes this much time an effort on something that could so easily be determined to have little value, then yeah, they are going to have trouble getting back on their feet. Too damn bad. I have no sympathy for anyone who wastes the opportunity to get a college degree with value. You can't just go out and develop a skill with out any regard for its value on the marketplace. It's like a company that starts producing products with out doing any research as to whether anybody will want that product.

Wait I thought every learned the Adams quote I posted?

Regardless, whatever the "American Dream"TM used to be, it's dead now.

Um, let's not be too harsh on psycholinguistics. It's not a ridiculously obscure or absurdly specialized field. The ability to communicate through language is perhaps the most important feature of human existence, so understanding how our brains manage that seems pretty important, too. I mean, I sort of get bashing the humanities, but surely the scientific, medical, and technological benefits of a field like psycholinguistics should be pretty apparent?

Did you guys somehow forget about the prologue to the first Max Payne? Max had a wife, a kid and a house in the suburbs. He called it the American dream, so that settles that argument.

As usual Max Payne solves all issues.

That's certainly my point. I don't know what Obi_Kwiet's is. Saying "Flipping burgers with an English degree" wouldn't be nearly so funny because that's the only thing studying English lit prepares you to do.

if I were stuck with an absurdly specialized phd I'd ask for my money back. :downs:

Sorry dude, but you're approaching Freelancer-like levels of misunderstanding academia.

For starters, students do not have the resources to determine whether their degree is in demand. Other than specific fields useful to industry, like computer science and chemistry, all jobs for people with advanced science degrees are in universities. Universities actively lie about job opportunities so they don't scare away potential students ("there's a big wave of retirements any day now!!!")

Secondly, if a graduate fails to find placement as a postdoc or associate professor (i.e. tenure track), the student is always blamed and the university cuts them off - no support, no resources, usually not even from their advisor (pretty cold after working for someone for 5-8 years, right?) This is to discourage the graduate from coming back and telling other students about the job market.

This ****'s like getting paid in company dollars.

So we're getting back to the original point. You want to talk about the lie of "hard work" = "reward"? Here's the god-given truth: it takes a huge, enormous lot of ****ing work to get a PhD. And I don't mean hard work like hard labor, lugging heavy things around all day - not that pussy kind of hard work that gives you an endorphin rush. I'm talking about the psychologically-damaging kind of hard work. The sort of thing that puts you in therapy for the rest of your life. At the end of it all, you are literally the world expert on an (often) incredibly useful subject.
What's the reward? **** all. If you somehow beat the other 100,000 people lining up for a tenure track position you might have a chance to make $50k one day.

Meanwhile, the dudes who drank their way through microeconomics and got a job at daddy's firm are doing zero work and making all of the money.

So pick work that's worthwhile to someone other than a university and get over it. I don't buy "students do not have the resources" -- maybe that was true a decade ago but now everyone has access to exactly this kind of resource and it's virtually free and takes almost no effort.

When I was in high school and we filled out those career survey things, they determined that, based on the amount of money I want to make and the things I'm supposedly good at, I should be either an airline pilot or a computer programmer. I spent years telling myself and everyone else that I'd never be a programmer.... ugh. So wtf happened? I followed the money because at some point I decided that although the work wasn't perfect, the money was worth it and I'd have the resources to go out and do something fun in my off time. If you're smart and driven enough to get a PHD in anything you should be smart and driven enough to do a ****ing google search before you waste 8 years of your life.

Well, I guess by the definition you just gave then I am absolutely, without exception against government unions. If you need to "attract the best and the brightest" then by all means pay a competive wage. But in government in particular wages and benefits should not be set in stone. If the money to pay does not exist then "but it's in our contract!" is not realistic. And right now the money simply is not there.

We should be paying them even more. We could cut taxes and make government work a respectable middle-class job again if the federal government didn't piss away half the tax revenue in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's the dirty little lie the rich people don't want you to know. There's plenty of wealth for everyone, they just want it all for themselves.

Uh... no, that's not true. Well, the last part's true. The first part's bull.

There are enough dollars for everyone, but there isn't enough wealth. Huge difference.

There will always be a gulf between rich people and poor people. That's the way it has to be, if we don't want our grocery bill written in scientific notation. The problem is the size of the gulf. It's pretty much the definition of inefficient market outcomes when only one person in a thousand actually has enough money to do something with his ideas.

You're missing my point.

My point is that these people are working extremely hard to accomplish a totally reasonable goal, in the pursuit of a fairly low-paying, modest job, in good faith that there will be opportunities available to them when they're finished. I'm just using grad students as an example... this applies to all workers.

You did object to the idea that "hard work ≠ success," right? But you don't think working toward a goal is the right kind of hard work, or performing really well in an entry-level job.... You must be using some definition of "hard work" with which I am not familiar. Perhaps by "hard work" you mean... getting lucky? Being born to the correct parents in the correct social circle? Winning the lottery? Am I getting close?

(I'm tempted to waste my time pontificating about how this information really wasn't available more than a couple of years ago, or calling you out on your complete bull**** about people predicting the job market 5-8 years in the future, but I won't because it's not the point.)

I don't understand why you equate education with "hard work" -- it might be "hard work" in some sense but not in the sense I'm talking about. You can't just pick anything under the sun and "work hard" at it and expect to make a living. If your college lies to you about what tangible benefits your education will provide then who exactly are you holding responsible for that? All the career surveys I took at my ****ty high school suggested things that actually make money. There were no psycholinguistics jobs on there at all.

I seriously don't get you because you hold yourself as if you're so smart but your whole outlook is that we should feel sorry for these kids who got "tricked" into picking a major at school and now can't get a job? Gimme a ****ing break! I feel for them really but as I said before, just because a college or university offers a program that will educate you in some subject doesn't mean that upon successful completion you will get a job.

Education != Jobs. It never has! It never will! The rest of society isn't required to bend over backwards because you got your Phd in studying the chemical makeup of the hair on a mole's ass. It's not luck that led another student to study computer science instead. Or the other guy who went to a vocational school and is making 25 bucks an hour working on hot rods and isn't pissing and moaning that he can't pay back the $100,000 loan he didn't take out to get some stupid degree in something that's not worth anything to anyone.

Dude... a PhD program is a paid entry-level research job. You go to maybe 3 classes in your first year, and all of them are about experiment design and ethics. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Sorry about the upcoming derail, but when PhDs are mentioned I just have to chime in.

You're pretty much right on most points here (psychologically-damaging is a bit over-dramatic... it's fine if you know what you're getting into, but absolutely hellish for those who don't) but I have to mention that engineering PhD's do make more money in industry than their counterparts with Masters/BS degrees - firms are obligated to pay a higher salary to people with higher qualifications. That is, they'll be making 80-100K. Of course, the need for PhD's in industry (in general) is dubious at best and that means, like you said, there are a lot less available positions in industry for a PhD. For example, my father, who has a PhD in mechanical engineering, used to work at two very large MEP (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing) consulting engineering firms before he left to start his own consulting business. He was the only PhD in both these firms. Depending on your field though, industry positions can be more common than you think. In chemical engineering for example, my peers are getting jobs easily enough at Intel/Big Oil/Biotech.

That said though, the PhD in general is basically a weed-out course for professorship - which is virtually the only job in the world that requires a PhD. If you're in it to get an industry job you're misguided. Those who get jobs in the industry are considered lucky, and even then the job security is not very high. When businesses are financially stressed, one of the first departments to get budget cuts (i.e. lay-offs) is R&D.

Dear America,

When the Republican budget cuts eventually get passed, 900,000 Americans lose their jobs, and the GDP growth rate dips back down to the negatives, please don't let them blame the Democrats for it.

Please.

Sincerely,

- Jon`C

That means we can hire 900,000 more soldiers!

Soldiers are perfect. The best part about them is, if they die, you don't have to pay them.

I think you're ignoring your own post. You stated that getting a phd is really hard work and therefore you should have a reasonable expectation to get a job after you get it, but that if you don't, you're cut off from the university. I said that no, you shouldn't expect that just because you did "hard work" should you have the expectation of getting a job. But you ignored my whole post because apparently I misunderstood what you meant when you were complaining about phds not being able to find jobs when they're done. Ugh.

I like how you say "lose their jobs" as if these jobs were already in existence and currently filled by said Americans.

No, I read your entire post and your entire point is that "education is not HARD WORK."

You've posted a lot about how certain things aren't hard work (now it's education, working toward a goal and performing well in a job) but you haven't posted what you think hard work is. TBH at this point I'm starting to suspect that you have no idea, you just don't want to accept the fact that America isn't a meritocracy.

This is my own prediction and not based on projected job creation rates.

I predict that the unemployed and underemployed population in the United States will increase by 900,000 by this time in 2012 if this bill is passed.

I wouldn't worry about it, other people "predicted" the world will end in 2012 with an equal amount of reasoning to back it up.

Not trying to be contrarian, but is this on top of any other raise in unemployment, or are you going to attribute any job loss up 900,000 to the budget cuts?

On the contrary, you keep insisting that someone should be able to pick anything under the sun and "work hard" at it and expect to get a job. I keep insisting that that is moronic. You're limiting your idea to working hard on whatever it is you're already doing (flipping burgers, getting yet another useless degree). You have to make an educated decision as to what you're going to work hard at. If you're flipping burgers I don't recommend flipping them harder or faster. I recommend spending time learning how to do something other than flipping burgers. Is that "something" the same for every person? No, but if you're flipping burgers in the middle of Nebraska and you go to school to get a degree in marine biology and only when you're done do you realize that there are no places within a thousand miles that will employ you doing anything related to marine biology maybe you should go back to flipping burgers. If you want to get paid you have to be able to do something that someone will find valuable and thus pay you for. It's up to you to figure out what that something is. If you believe the propaganda spewed forth by the education system without doing your own research then have fun. Maybe you can get a job at Skippers instead of Burger King and then you'd get to flip something fishy at least.

Right, just like I thought: you don't know.

I fail to see why Brian's point isn't valid. Also, I think he pretty clearly defined what he thought of hard work in his personal examples alone, and then further clarified to add what hard work alone couldn't do, which isn't the same as being born into the rich, getting lucky, or other cynical factors that don't involve hard work.

As for the broader points being made in this thread, I have no strong thoughts on the matter, which is why I'm refraining from speaking about them.

Maybe if "get a degree and a better job" wasn't really "get a degree and go back to flipping burgers" like 80% of the time

So you're looking for a single unified answer on what every person in america should work harder at? And unless I give you that every point I've made in every post in this thread is completely invalid?

I'd like to say that I'm just not smart enough to come up with the answer, but the reality is that (of course) there isn't one single thing everyone in america can work harder at that will give them a better life.

There's so much bitterness here against the government (well, specifically republicans) but it seems like the real thing you're pissed off about is the education "system."

It's still part of the discussion, isn't it? Socializing wealth, unions etc provide a safety net for when other systems fail.

Discounting everything I say because I don't have the answer to an impossible question isn't part of any meaningful discussion.