I do love listening in on my fellow student’s conversations as we all sit around in the classroom waiting for class to start in the morning. It’s how I stay “hip” with the youth of America.
Yesterday morning was no different. There is a group of four guys in the middle of the room playing cards with another five or six standing around watching the gameplay. Others are finishing off their homework or getting in a quickie breakfast snack. But they are all discussing the same thing:
Obama’s SOTU speech.
Specifically, the “income inequality” and “raise the minimum wage” bits.
In a nutshell, they know he’s full of shit and they’re having none of it. They really don’t like the Seattle City Council’s “Socialist Alternative” member, Kshama Sawant, and her “$15 an hour NOW!” shit either.
I realize that I am in a classroom full of guys learning highly industrialized skills and that the “Culinary Arts” or “Nursing” classes probably aren’t so fed up with the populist pap just yet, but they will be soon enough when it falls on it’s face.
While not every single one of them realize it, most of these guys know that so long as they stick with the program and keep their shit straight, they can finish the course and walk into $18-20 an hour jobs within a month of getting their degree (unlike the guy spending 4 years and $60k at the University of Washington).
They also know that this is likely one of the hardest things they’ll ever have to do. Not only do they have to learn a skill that requires pro-gamer level hand-eye coordination, the degree program also includes coursework involving Trigonometry, Chemistry, Metallurgy and Electrical Theory. Guys like myself are tacking on Fabrication courses which involve wickedly strange geometric formulas and Auto-CAD. All in 15 months. Some of these guys never finished high school and are working their asses off trying to keep up AND hold down at least part-time jobs.
There is no way any of them are going to let some hare-brained socialist hand $15 an hour to someone who slings coffee in the daytime for their inspiration to write shitty poetry at night. If there is going to be a “Second Industrial Revolution” in the US, as the signs are pointing towards, there will likely also be a “fiscal conservative revival” following it up closely.
Interesting times, indeed.
Phil,
Because of your blogging about this I went to a welding school for a tour yesterday. I’m tired of the retail sales thing.
Can you send me an email or post here the name of the school you are attending?
Email sent. For those wondering, it’s Renton Technical College.
Yep, another point in the coming (hopefully bloodless) revolution – when enough people get fed up enough to finally do something!
Merle
As they say, America is a lazy giant. But when she finally gets tired of goofing around and decides shit’s gotta get done, the momentum once underway is hard to stop. Let’s hope we are well and truly getting up to speed by November, and can turn a lot of these elected fools into roadkill.
Heh….
Listening to my fellow students….
I wish.
I have to be an annoyance to get them to look up from their phones and take out an ear phone.
I’m the annoying, older student that actually wants to talk with you….
Bwaaaahhahahahahahaha!!!!
What can I say? I have to entertain myself when I’m bored, so I make these kids actually pay attention to their surroundings.
I remember when I retrained 30 years ago and the commuters were about the only interesting people in the room. Most of us had come to the end of what ever we had been doing. I found it interesting that Economics captures this as “Structural Unemployment”.
It is good that some of the young ones are “getting it” as they will need to carry on the torch when we are done.
Just remember the problems we see are not caused by the politicians, but the bureaucrats they created.
It’s good to hear that not everybody is buying the claptrap the administration is handing out.
The only way to fight this evil “income inequality” is to make everybody’s income equal. Let’s shoot for $25,000/year. You, me, Tom Cruise, Donald Trump, the guy at the freeway off-ramp with the cardboad sign, …