George Rebane
College grads of 2017. The good news is that enough workers have retired, been laid off, or just left the work force that is this “another healthy year for college hiring” report in the 25apr17 WSJ. The bad news is that “this year’s job-seeking seniors are ill-prepared for the job hunt and many coveted positions”. The chart below tells the story. It’s clear that employers overwhelmingly want people who have some skills that can translate into delivering marketable products/services. And it’s also clear that too few students want to major in fields that are needed in the wealth creating enterprises when schools denigrate capitalistic pursuits and hold out government and feel-good NGOs as the professional destinations of choice for correctly thinking people. Note also that the percent of seniors in that pretty broad spectrum of creditable major fields totals only 58.3%. The question that begs an answer is, ‘What in hell did it say on the degrees of the other 41.7% of graduating seniors?’
Revolving doors of rural counties in California. One of our prominent local liberals wrote a lament in the 25apr17 Union describing the dreadful job situation in Nevada County. Not that there are no jobs to be had, but that there are no jobs to be had for people with deficient skill sets (see above scattershot). These folks are drawn here by our progressive community in the scenic forest covered foothills where from a distance it appears that the livin’ is easy. In her column she seems to think that all that is required for jobs to spring up in a community is the expressed need for such jobs by new arrivals. There is no hint of understanding in her piece that employers, first and foremost, are in the business of satisfying their customers’ needs, and that labor is a cost to be minimized. Add to that our notorious reputation as a business friendly county, and the revolving door for such newcomers explains itself. The blind are those who invite their like-minded friends to come up here with little understanding of the economic straits we have been attempting to navigate as young families move away and the county’s population decreases. And the future doesn’t look that much better with rumors that our lamenting and lamentable lady seeks to run for office so that she and hers can complete the job of importing the wisdom of our Statehouse to the Rood Center.
[update] “Border security” is the new term of art bandied about to step back from Trump’s promise to build a “wall” across our southern border. As mentioned here before, only naïfs and the cynical interpret that as being an ocean-to-gulf 30ft high wall. The real term of art should be ‘border porosity’ as the parameter of national sovereignty that we desire to control and set limits on – the correct answer for an acceptable porosity is a maximum of 15,000 illegals per year coming into the country from all sides and sources. Nobody knows what a bullshit term like ‘border security’ means, but define it as ‘porosity’ and give it an upper limit, then we can have a debate about what it should be and how much it should cost. When we parametize porosity, we can bring in the cadres of barrier technology experts and people knowledgeable about how legal entrants become illegals to shed light on the problem, so that we don’t wind up with another 11,000,000 in-country illegals seeking a free lunch and/or to bring in the rest of their families. You have to understand, these illegals are either stupid or cynical when they get here, oppose controlled entry, and then scream bloody murder in the public forum, accusing the rest of us of being “anti-immigrant” in a land that has always welcomed the legal immigrants who have done more than their share of making America great. We will not solve the illegal alien problem until we acknowledge that immigration is a two-party contract (in the same way we will not solve our butt-stupid ‘war against terror’ until we acknowledge that we are instead in a global civilizational conflict against the Islam that seeks to dominate the world.)
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