Are you ready for the invasion of the job snatchers?

My daughter is already quite bummed trying to look for work. Her boyfriend is fortunate to have found a spot at a small theater complex, but she is still seeking.

Honestly, if we can leave the soul crushing menial labor jobs to robots we’ll likely be better off.

When my kid is 16 he’s going to be very qualified to work at some tech support centre that old people ring to get help on their computers when they forget their email password or can’t turn on their smart phones or work as a translator.

Perhaps, like @ARE_you_kidding_me leave the soul crushing jobs to robots and educate and challenge our children more.

That would be great, except not all kids grow the same, face new challenges the same, greet each day the same.
Jobs availability is needed on every skill level.
My daughter is highly qualified in many ways, but joining the workforce is a test not yet tried for most teens.
If school is a struggle for many, imagine then, how it must be for those kids to face first employment.

“Honestly, if we can leave the soul crushing menial labor jobs to robots we’ll likely be better off.”

Great idea until everyone’s out of work.

For some people, there’s always a rationale to pay less to the working class. The whole “minimum wage will cost jobs” thing is just the latest approach used to rationalize treating employees like shit. This isn’t new – it’s been around one way or another for 60 years. And it’s jut as pernicious today as it was in 1950.

The fact is that business owners think that low wage people are like pieces of sand on a beach – easily replaceable and in large quantity. What business owners fail to realize is that constant hiring and turnover costs them money and makes customers unhappy with the crappy management (say, at a fast food place).

Consider why Sams Club and Walmart have unhappy employees and huge employee turnover, and why Costco has happy and eager employees and practically no turnover at all.

The whole minimum wage argument is pushed by business owners who don’t have a long view of business.

As the current political climate clearly demonstrates, a solution must be found and soon for an economy that no longer requires lower skilled manual labor. It’s bad enough that productivity gains lengthen the unemployment lines, but it is decidedly suicidal when the benefits attained from those gains are restricted almost exclusively to the ruling class.

@elbanditoroso

Yep. Want employees to give a shit? Then pay them enough to give a shit.

If we went back to picking cotton by hand and grinding grain in a crank mill, there’d be more jobs to go around, too…

Last time I checked not having to pick crops by hand, having everything be one of a kind and hand made, books copied letter by letter by hand was a good thing. It’s evevitable, get used to it. We adapt and less menial labor puts the focus back on the arts, creativity and solving larger problems..I also see @Seek beat me by a second or two..

“We adapt and less menial labor puts the focus back on the arts, creativity and solving larger problems..”

It doesn’t, not really. Not in this society. No, it just leaves people without income.

Only if people insist on doing things the same way. Jesus, I feel like pulling down “who moved my cheese” and reciting it.

Yes, clearly the world will change if people would just listen to you.

Does not matter if people want to hold on to doing things the old way, change will happen. You don’t have to listen to me or anyone. This is simply a matter of fact. Automation will eventually take my line of work. I’ll be forced to adapt again.

I have a friend whose Downs daughter is a grown woman who is very proud to have a job and her own apartment.
There ARE people who need jobs who find those “soul crushing” jobs quite satisfactory.

Yes, it will. But that does not mean it’s necessarily a good thing.

Change does not affect everyone or everything in the same way. I agree not all of it will be good but I think in general it’s much better to live in the future and not the past both literally and figuratively.

Because realizing that not everyone is an artist or a creative thinker is “living in the past”?

No but we’ll find other soul crushing jobs that don’t require much of any talent. Tech is creating some new ones centered around regulations and paperwork. Not everyone is going to have a place to land but it’s always been that way. Even if not everyone has work we are better off being freed from drudgery.

DIY culture took my husband’s job. I vote we outlaw Pinterest and YouTube.

“What jobs will be left for our 16 year olds when they want to work to pay for gas money and pot?”

They’d go to school, like they’re supposed to, and have jobs that make more money than flipping burgers.

Youtube has been my DIY buddy. There is hardly anything you can’t figure out on youtube. I have not paid anyone for much on my car or house in years.

Since soul crushing jobs were brought up, my 17 year old who has been looking for a job since last fall would kill for a soul crushing job any job. He laments how he is competing with college educated people who are gobbling up these soul crushing job.

^^^^^Yeah, so there!

If I had to do things over I wouldn’t have focused on the kids going to college and encouraged them to get into a vo-tech school.

@Dutchess_III, now that has me curious. Why?

@Dutchess_III My son wants to become an aviation mechanic. He could get his certificate in 18 months and be making $80,000 a year, but my wife insists he get a 4 year degree.

Because a trade school is only a year or so long, @Patty_Melt. It gives them valuable skills quickly, and it’s not nearly as expensive as college.
In many cases, it lands more lucrative jobs than a college degree does.
Kids just never know how their lives are going to change at that age. They never know when they might suddenly find themselves tied down with responsibilities, and only half way through college. Then they’ve lost it all, until if/when they have the means to finish in the future.

I was wondering if something specific occured to make you feel that way.
My daughter has her heart set on college, but over the last two decades, it seems to be slipping in importance compared to the costs.
She has a good plan in place. With her skills and grades, she should have no trouble getting into a good college. I just worry also about the unforseen.

AT&T paid for my training after they hired me, and I did it on company time.

Well, my life derailed after my divorce, so any plans on sending the kids to college went out the window. One daughter DID go on to college, and is now horribly in debt due to student loans. She has also become disabled in the last year and literally can not work, so now she can’t pay them back.

My son went for 1.5 years, using a Pell Grant. He planned to major in herpetology. Then his life derailed and he dropped out. He’s now in maintenance at a beautiful retirement compound. We expect him to wind up taking over the whole shebang some day, because he’s crazy smart.

My youngest started working on her paralegal associates degree, then she got pregnant with the twins,she was single, and her life derailed. She also has student loan debts. She drives a forklift now.

So. Yeah. In those brief windows of freedom, they could have had skills in the medical field, all over the place. Good pay, too.

I went to trade school after two years in Geology. I came out with no debt, actual skills and after two years working was making as much as engineers were, doing work that was nearly indistinguishable. My company paid my tuition to get an actual engineering degree part-time while I was employed. When I graduated I had a job waiting. @Cruiser I’d let your son go, he can always get a four year degree later. Trades are the best deal going right now. Hell, electricians are in such a high demand that the union halls offer paid apprenticeships. Most electricians that work on my projects make close to six figures.

^^^ Agreed. I didn’t finish my degree until after my divorce. It didn’t hold me in very good stead, except for a couple of years, 2010 to 2013. I would have been so much better off as a medical transcriptionist or something.
And…I still have student loan debt.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I have a very successful business that has zero need for an aviation mechanic and I am a bit biased that a son with a 4 year degree would have a broader education that would prepare him to get engaged in my business at some point down the road if he so chooses. A 4 year degree will afford him that option when I have the final grabber. To learn to run my company effectively takes 3–5 years at the very minimum and a sheepskin would give him a huge head start over just a T/S certification.

I can run your company, @Cruiser!

@Dutchess_III If you know stoichiometry then you are in the running.

Of course I know stoichiometry. Who doesn’t know stoichiometry?? smh.

There are plenty of worthless four year degrees, you can’t exactly say that about trades.
The “college experience” is what you are saying your son needs and I agree with you about that. It’s an experience all of us should be afforded. However, you may one day have to face the potential reality that your son has a passion for working with his hands and not running an adhesives company. It is his decision. I have an electrician with a masters degree in logic/philosophy. He got the four year for his parents but enjoys being a tradesman. I personally am a hands on engineer, I do manage but I get satisfaction from creating and repairing. I could have stayed a technician and been perfectly content.
Another thing worth mentioning is that some trade programs are more academically demanding than some four year programs. I recall a person with a degree in finance flunking out of the electronics program I went through. We had another with a degree in logistics that did not make it either.

I kinda don’t remember mine. I double majored in Brother’s Tavern and Foosball, with a minor in Pool.

It is a great experience meeting kids your own age, many of whom are smarter than you, and everyone is bursting with ideas and newly developing philosophies.

BUT it was also two years of just General Stuff that only accomplished in expanding my mind and developing my critical thinking skills. I settled on a major in Journalism, and in my sophomore year was guaranteed a spot on the school news paper the following year after a couple of articles I wrote. But then, my folks derailed, which derailed me and I never went back.
Those two years would have been better spent learning a trade. Trade schools focus one one thing, not 120.

@Cruiser Stoichiometry! I loves me some efficient chemistry.

—@cazzie Stoichiometry is too neat and tidy for me but a necessary evil here at work. Mixing in additives is where the real fun begins! :D-