putembk said:

Hey Ty, how are ya. All is well....you know what I mean. Need to come and see you soon. I will be bearing gifts of green. lol

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Oh! My favorite kind!

Brilliantly produced and created on the phone/device mom and dad bought them and pay the monthly service bill on. Special. Very special! Why wouldn't they be?


Gotta cop and say that I know a FEW 20-somethings who blow me away with their forward thinking/presence.....so the whining and "poor us" schtick doesn't run true across the board. In fact, a few of em are here @ the Farm....(bustin ass rather than whining)

I barely graduated high school, and I mean barely. Never liked school. Always thought it was a waste of time. As I have gotten older I have seen how fucked America's school system's are. From Kindergarten to College it needs to be revamped. I have chosen to home school my children, and I don't push college. I push hard work. By hard work I mean show up on time, and work 7 days a week if that's what it takes.

Going to college is not financially feasible for most 4 year degrees. That is a fact. I run my life by the numbers. The numbers don't show for me to push my children into debt slavery.

The best thing you can do is lead by example. I started with nothing, and in my time on this planet have created many successful businesses that have made their fare share of money.

Most people want life handed to them, and don't want to work for shit. This applies to all ages. :)

I no longer advise young people to spend their time and whomever's money on a college degree. Learn a high level technical trade. In fact, if you're up for it, join the military in a non-combat area, let them teach you that high level technical trade, then go on to earn some fucking BANK after you've done your stint.

That's what I advise young people to do now.

Seamaiden said:

I no longer advise young people to spend their time and whomever's money on a college degree. Learn a high level technical trade. In fact, if you're up for it, join the military in a non-combat area, let them teach you that high level technical trade, then go on to earn some fucking BANK after you've done your stint.

That's what I advise young people to do now.

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This is not a bad response, but I feel it's incomplete. This is how I respond to their questions;

Universities are no different a purchase than a home or a car- or tools for work. Does it meet the test of value? Will it give back what it requires for an investment? A college education can no longer be seen as the guarantee of a better job like it once was. Now, it's just another tool to get you to where you want to go.

So, where do you, the student/young person, WANT TO GO? Will a college degree help you get there? Focus on accumulating the necessary skills, experience AND people networking to shine in your endeavor of choice, whatever it is. You wanna be a spy? Better get some degrees along with your military experience. The CIA and Deputy of State take Masters degrees and up. Wanna be a race car driver? Then, get your ass to class- driving school- and get jobs and internships with race teams. College likely won't help. And so it goes...

When I tell the right people who I am on the Farm, I get the respect that comes with the networking and skills that I've earned here. So, this cred ultimately goes both ways... a university would be proud to have someone like me teaching courses on the finer points of indoor growing- and soon enough, a smart one will ask.

Hehheh... I know someone whose kid has gone on to do this truck racing thing. My advice? Get good sponsors! :D

You are blaming the wrong generation all of you. Each generation is to blame and each blames someone else. I am a boomer, my gen fought for epa and safety in the the workplace. My parents generation those born in the twenty's and 30's were the polluters. But they needed to climb out of the depression and ww2. We let the petroleum and chemical companies go wild. My Generation made the same mistakes the people made 100 years earlier by letting big business make decisions by allowing them to trash the unions and to build empires with no competition. The Y gen to me has no soul. They let a government come in and take all your rights away. Allowing the government to torture people and to hold them without charges. We are no different then russia, argentina,peru from times gone by. For the y and newer generation, their great problem will be with themselves. They will need to cure their ills by getting envolved. using the vote. Their number one enemy is corps and lobbyist who work for them. If they do not insist on a Truthful government working for the people, then they will deserve it when they take it up the ass. Maybe if they get enough immigrants to come in and breed in some more huevos. It has always been the immigrants taking it on the head till they fight back. From the Chinese,irish,catholics, eastern europeans, they set the line and refused to cross it. They fought a 40 year war but they got the 8 hour day in safe conditions, and made it hard for a cop to pop a cap on a poor person. Y generation needs to learn that there is safety in numbers and hit the streets with there demands. JK

If it Looks like "Work" and Sounds like "Work"... It's work. Many will prefer to Text their "Demands" or Have Some One Else "Get Involved" for them... They (Y's) are already "Takin' it up the Ass" They just haven't realized it yet... Even after all that financed College Education / Debt.

Technology connects us more than ever but fails to Motivate people to get Personally Involved or have Skin in the Game. Placing "Blame" on someone else or A Previous Generation??? You "Get what you Give", and if that is "Nothing" then That will be what you receive... Keep Complaining and See where it gets you.... :facepalm:
Can't "We" just Facebook or Tweet what "We" want... :woot:

Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs: "Why "Work Smark Not Hard" is the worst Advice in the world."

Popular Mechanics Article (Copy/Pasted instead of link so yall can avoid adds)



Mike Rowe: "When I was 17 my high school guidance counselor tried to talk me into going on to earn a four-year degree. I had nothing against college, but the universities that Mr. Dunbar recommended were expensive, and I had no idea what I wanted to study. I thought a community college made more sense, but Mr. Dunbar said a two-year school was "beneath my potential." He pointed to a poster hanging behind his desk: On one side of the poster was a beaten-down, depressed-looking blue-collar worker; on the other side was an optimistic college graduate with his eyes on the horizon. Underneath, the text read: Work Smart NOT Hard.

"Mike, look at these two guys," Mr. Dunbar said. "Which one do you want to be?" I had to read the caption twice. Work Smart NOT Hard?

Back then universities were promoting themselves aggressively, and propaganda like this was all over the place. Did it work? Well, it worked for colleges, that's for sure. Enrollments soared. But at the same time, trade schools faltered. Vocational classes began to vanish from high schools. Apprenticeship programs and community colleges became examples of "alternative education," vocational consolation prizes for those who weren't "college material."

Today student loans eclipse $1 trillion. There's high unemployment among recent college graduates, and most graduates with jobs are not even working in their field of study. And we have a skills gap. At last count, 3 million jobs are currently available that either no one can do, or no one seems to want. How crazy is that?

I think often about the people I met on Dirty Jobs. Most of them were tradesmen. Many were entrepreneurs and innovators. Some were millionaires. People are always surprised to hear that, because we no longer equate dirt with success. But we should.

I remember Bob Combs, a modest pig farmer who fabricated from scratch a massive contraption in his backyard that changed the face of modern recycling in Las Vegas by using the casino food-waste stream to feed his animals. He was offered $75 million for his operation and turned it down. He's a tradesman.

Then there was Matt Freund, a dairy farmer in Connecticut who thought his cows' manure might be more valuable than their milk, and who built an ingenious machine that makes biodegradable flowerpots out of cow crap. He now sells millions of CowPots all over the world. He's a tradesman.

Mostly, I remember hundreds of men and women who loved their jobs and worked their butts off: welders, mechanics, electricians, plumbers. I've met them in every state, and seen firsthand a pride of workmanship that simply doesn't exist in most "cleaner" industries. And I've wondered, why aren't they on a poster? Why aren't we encouraging the benefits of working smart AND hard?

The skills gap is bad news for the economy, but it also presents an opportunity. Last month I ran into a woman named MaryKaye Cashman, who runs a Caterpillar dealership in Las Vegas, and she told me they had more than 20 openings for heavy-equipment technicians. That's kind of astonishing. A heavy-equipment technician with real-world experience can earn upward of six figures. And the training program is free! But still the positions go unfilled? In a state with 9.6 percent unemployment? What's going on?




Here's a theory: What if "Work Smart NOT Hard" is not just a platitude on a poster? What if it's something we actually believe? I know it's a cliché, but clichés are repeated every day by millions of people. Is it possible that a whole generation has taken the worst advice in the world?

Look again at the image on the poster above, which I reproduced just the way I remember it. Those stereotypes are still with us. We're still lending billions of dollars we don't have to kids who can't pay it back in order to educate them for jobs that no longer exist. We still have 3 million jobs we can't fill. Maybe it's the legacy of a society that would rather work smart than hard.

Last month I launched an online campaign called Lessons From the Dirt. It's a modest attempt to get people talking about the skilled trades in a more balanced way. If you're not opposed to a little tasteful vandalism, check out my updated version of Mr. Dunbar's poster on lessonsfromthedirt.com. The image might amuse you, but the caption is no joke—Work Smart AND Hard.

I don't know if changing one little word in one stupid slogan will reinvigorate the skilled trades. I just think it's time for a new cliché. My own trade—such as it is—started with an "alternative education," purchased for a reasonable price at a two-year school. I suspect a lot of others could benefit from a similar road. So get a poster and hang it high. And if you see Mr. Dunbar, tell him I turned out okay.

Seamaiden said:

I no longer advise young people to spend their time and whomever's money on a college degree. Learn a high level technical trade. In fact, if you're up for it, join the military in a non-combat area, let them teach you that high level technical trade, then go on to earn some fucking BANK after you've done your stint.

That's what I advise young people to do now.

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That's good advice, but it SHOULDN'T be--and it doesn't portend a positive situation for the future of this country.

If everyone makes that choice then we're up shits creek. We really are already there in terms of turning out more qualified scientists and engineers.

@sky high--I'll take a manufacturing sector, about 15 or so trillion less national debt, and 5x cheaper college education ANY DAY OF THE WEEK over some stupid device that is ruining our culture single-handedly. You were saying?

I reject the idea that in order to "whine" about this I must be some good-for-nothing lazy idiot. I bust my ass and have since I was 15, never complaining what I was paid or what something cost me--but getting a college education has given me perspective in terms of what kinds of issues our country is facing with respect to turning out the best of the best minds.

I have made it work for me--but there are HUGE numbers of people who bust ass to make something of themselves and end up waiting tables 100k in debt.

Squiggly, I don't like that fact any more than you do, but it's true. I know so many more college grads who owe basically a mortgage on a house they're never going to get to live in, than I do who've managed to just find work in their field that it seems that college holds little more than empty promises for young people. That's how I see it.

In China the young people are experiencing much the same problem--everyone is college educated, so the market for college educated is oversaturated.

Instead of singling out a group of people (Y's) or groups of people (races, gays, etc) why not ask the question, "Why are the majority of ALL people unhappy? I don't know about anyone else but I see people of all ages very unhappy. And the fact that a huge percentage of people take feel-good pharma drugs and/or use "recreational drugs to escape and find happiness is a clear sign that a very large majority of ALL people are very unhappy.

and BTW, there is no way in hell that going to college these days gets you very far. Yes, it was very good 30-50 years ago but not so today. Just ask a graduate with $150k in student debt loan who is flipping burgers and living with his parents still. But even in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (30-40s and into the early 70's a young punk with ONLY a high school graduate degree could get out in the world and land a great factory job (ie Auto Industry, Steel Mills, etc) make the big bucks, have great health insurance and work 25- 30 years and retire with a great pension. Those days are long freaking gone.

Back in my day (60's-70s) you could work a minimum wage job and still afford your own apartment, pay the utilities, have plenty of food and still have money to play with. No chance in hell of that happening now..and it has nothing to do with so-called "lazy" young kids. Young kids don't have a fucking chance nowadays. Shit, at age 16, I worked a part time job making pizzas while still going to high school. In a week I could make 100 bucks and I could go out and buy a good reliable car for 100 bucks. What's it cost a young person today to buy a running junker? 1000 bucks if they are lucky? And how long will it take to save up 1000 bucks working minimum wage?

I don't feel sorry for the lazy young folks (or the lazy middle agers or the lazy old fucks) but I do feel bad that many good young folks have been thrown into a pot of shit thanks to bankers controlling inflation and manipulating the work force of america which was once the fucking best in the entire world. And not to mention how the young folks gets suckered in Academia college promises of gold and riches only to get out and find they are up to their square asses in debt and no jobs in their "field."

Just look at Squiggy as a perfect example, all kinds of schooling and no job. ;)

That brings up the question..."What is "happy?"

To some....it's a trip to Wal-Mart or a new car. To others...it's >something more<.

I think yer right on though. There are lotsa folks wearing HUGE Band-Aids out there.....searchin' for "happy". (in all the wrong places)

This thread has gotten fractious enough, let's not make others feel as though they're being called out, mkay?

My apologies to the Squiggs reference.

But I am sure there are many folks who are in those same shoes. Lots of college, lots of debt, no job. For most it was no fault of theirs, they worked hard, put in the time and money only to find out the job market dropped out and it continues to plummet.

Take away food, water and shelter for a while (or their good health) and what is defined by people as "happy" will surely change.

That X-box and cell-phone won't mean shit.

College Degree and No Job??? Speak and Write fluently and can carry A conversation / Talk A lot Endlessly??? Don't have the Motivation or Aptitude for Technical Trade Jobs such as Aviation, Mechanical / Structural Engineering, Manufacturing (Currently the "Highest Demand"... can pay as much as 6 figures but not enough for some? ) or the Pure Desire to Work Physically "Smart" and "Hard"??? (maybe get A little dirty? :()...

Then "You may be A Politician" and "We" Have A job for you...