I believe there are a lot of reasons for kids out of high school not being able to make money.

One is LOCATION.

I went to high school in Bartow, Fl. and kids could get out of high school and go to work for the phosphate mining companies and make 5 times what the minimum wage was back then. It was just being lucky to live there that worked in those kids favor.

Also...when I was 18 the drinking laws in Fla. were 18. They turned to 21 the next year. And INSTANTLY about 90% of the bars went out of business (I know because I was playing them in my band). And with that...all those great paying bartender and waitress jobs.

Fast forward to 2011. I have a 19 year old daughter. There is nothing out there for her. IF the drinking laws and gambling laws didn't discriminate against ADULTS under the age of 21, she could be making GREAT money here in Vegas either dealing blackjack or waitressing/bartending. But she isn't allowed by the govt. to do either anymore.

I know I'm a bit older than a lot of folks on here. But when I first jumped out in the world, bars were a great place for 18 year olds to make great money. A lot of kids paid their way through college bartending. Not anymore.

Thanks govt. :(

Good post. My first gig out of high school was working the door at a really busy club.
Let's just say Benjamin Franklin got you inside when the line was around the block, and there was plenty of impatient people who didn't like long lines. :)

Strongly disagree...

People tend to hang out with like minded people for the most part, and/or people of a similar financial and social make up.

So doctors hang out with doctors and rarely with nurses...

My GF and I don't watch Two and a Half Men and think it is one of the stupidest shows we have ever seen. However, most of America watches the show.

We personally know only two people that watch Jersey Shore. My daughter and one of her friends. However, it is watched by more people than any other non-major network show.

All but two of my friends think Fox news is stupid. But it has a huge following I don't know about because I don't care to hang out with those people. And that is all it means...

I believe a lot of good things were figured out by 1950. A lot more things that were good were figured out, and played out, in 1960 to 1980. Then America went to shit. Suddenly there was a law for stupid shit where the gov't decided it would be the best parent for your kids and the real laws protecting America from tyranny went out the window (OP).

I worked at a meat packing plant just out of high school. I would like to see how long those faggoty marxist protesters last one day in a place like that. Give them shovels and have them clear driveways this winter. :321GFY

couldnt agree more with you

wow agree so much.

what is with gfy today? people are making sense!!!

Makes a lot of sense. I graduated high school in 1989. I grew up in a small town that was a lumber milll town. At that time the minimum wage was around $3.25 per hour. A person at 18 years old could get a basic job in one of the lumber mills and make around $10 per hour. My brother did and within a few years he was making $14. So he was 21 making about four times the minimum wage.

Here is the kicker. The wages at the mill have been stagnate. My brother left because he knew that his future there was not good and had a better opportunity and it was the best thing he ever did. In the town I grew up in there were three mills. One of them has shut down and the others only run a day shift, not 24/7 like they used to. The starting jobs there are now around $11 per hour, but minimum wage in my state is now $8.50.

The country is changing. The number of jobs a typical high school grad can get right out of school that turn into jobs that they can live a normal middle class life on are quickly disappearing. It is sad that now the choice seems to be to live on much lower wages, or go to school and get $50-$100K in debt in order to get a better paying job.

The tea party would just sell everyone out. It's inherent to their nature.

Besides they love wall street, they love the rich, they love the bankers.

They love whomever can buy hem out and tell them what to say.

Yet you don't have the balls to occupy wall street.

Your kind had the chance, but sold out.

Life is funny that way - tough guys aren't all that tough when push comes to shove.

And a college degree is no guarantee that you'll get that job after graduation.



This discussion has de-volved into a debate about whether the middle class is better or worse off than in the past, but that's not what OWS is about at all.

IMO it's about the top 1% owning an ever growing percentage of the nation's total wealth, in large part due to their undo influence with Congressmen and mass media.

Then they got nothin to lose. And no reason to pay attention to whiners like you.

But, at the occupy event I was at earlier today, I'd say it was about even thirds, between gray haired folks, folks my age, and studenty types.

I'd say nearly everyone there who wasn't a student had jobs or were well off - at least, they had that look.

They were just pissed off that your kind and obama let the bankers game the system, and did nothing about it.

Afterwards my wife and I went out for a fine japanese dinner, on porn money.

The bottom of society looking for their betters to pay their way.
Same song over and over.

its about a bunch of jobless loosers getting drunk on street and doing stupid shit :)

Are you gonna cry for us one-liner? Same old whining, no thought required, just bitching like an old lady.

boohoo I hate those hippy kids so much! They are being so mean to my banker pals! boohooooo. They are dirty and they smoke pot and just don't know to bow down to their betters.

It's no surprise occupy gets your panties in a wad.

It's been really funny watching those fucking dirty hippies show you tea ladies what balls actually look like.

More from Krugman - who seems to be having fun poking at the hot air froth spewing from the right, the tea ladies, murdochians and foxfags, and wall street.

you know the drill - if its behind a paywall go to google news and search Panic of the Plutocrats

Haha!
Panties in a wad. Yeah that's it.
As I drove past them on my way to happy hour Friday, I gave them a sarcastic thumbs up and said "yeay capitalism"
Get back to me when these losers get some of their members elected to congress.
You know, like the tea ladies did.:1orglaugh
For every loser out there protesting, there's someone else working hard to get rich.
That's the part you losers don't get. You never worked hard enough or smart enough to become successful. You delude yourself into thinking you have but you haven't.
You're exactly where you SHOULD be.

Occupy Wall St is controlled opposition. Go ahead and continue playing their game.

Re-instate Glass steagall act (which most of these losers have no idea what it is) and the losers will still be demanding their handout.
Tea party= protecting their earnings
occupy= demanding someone else's earnings

that *is* the idiot version of the story.
perhaps if you worked harder, you'd be part of the 1%
Then you'd understand that the 1% doesn't need congress to get ahead.

Winter is coming... things will change :1orglaugh

Right, just like you? :1orglaugh

So you take the time to protest yet have the balls to call someone else a whiner and wonder why you and your idiotic entitlement group isn't taken seriously? Funny how amidst this ridiculous blamefest creates by this movement, nobody mentions the fault of the American consumer for living beyond his means, going broke when he loses his job, and then has entitlement issues. But as you're so famous for saying, keep following your masters.

This campaign is well intentioned but naive. Without financial deregulation in most western countries during the eighties, we wouldn't have the current crisis, I'm sure they are right but ill give you a few other things we wouldn't have:

The internet
Google
Microsoft
Apple
Mobile phones
Laptops
The real possibility of a cure for cancer...soon
The fact that HIV is now rarely fatal in the west

The above are just a few examples of what would not have been possible if bright people with good ideas didn't have access to the funds that deregulation made possible.
I'm not defending the bankers, just pointing out that the financial world is increasingly complicated and interconnected place, allowing people who don't understand the system (almost everyone) to stick their noses into global finance is like asking a tree surgeon to perform open heart surgery...it might work...but I doubt it.

yeah, if you were more intelligent and worked harder, you could be in the top 1% of earners. just like me.


sadly, it will never happen for you, loser.:1orglaugh

If you think anyone here believes your personal income exceeds $1.25 million a year then you're even more delusional than I thought. :1orglaugh

if one person getting shot were a precursor to a war the US wouldn't have any people left...

WW1 didn't even start because of that 'infamous shot'. It was the severe political tensions that led up to that, which make these issues seem laughable. When the middle class are starving and the poor are dying then people will move...

I doubt that both even have "a LOT of sheep". The mainstream news media is intentionally giving this more than it deserves and is fraudulently and artificially making this a growing movement. This past weekend was the first of these protests in the Phoenix area. Both CNN and local CBS, ABC and NBC affiliates reported there were "hundreds" of people protesting. I was there. I never counted more than 120 people over 4 hours. The very repsectful cops hauled away about 40 people who were simply assholes. If the camera crews had showed a reasonably wide-angle... just a shot from across the street from where they assembled... it would have looked very small and unimpressive. I've seen lines for movie tickets and sporting events that looked more intimidating. If the TV cameras stopped showing up at these "events" this movement would die a quick and proper death. It's bogus propaganda.

thats why you're a bottom runger and I'm not:thumbsup

I know it sounds like a bajillion kajillion dollars to trash like yourself but it ain't that hard to be a top 1%er:thumbsup

I have seen the same thing during the "riots" in Miami in the 1980's.
I was living down there then and on the CBS Evening News it looked like the entire city of Miami was on fire. My family was calling me worried and shit...but the reality was that it was a small city block by the interstate.

And if they had panned the camera back it would have shown how tiny the "riot" was. It wasn't even noticeable to us that lived there.

So yeah, I totally get what you're saying.

That's hardly an analogy you can validly use...

Interesting. Most people I see supporting it are solid middle class people who wake up and go to work every day. Sure, they're not in the park, but they still support the movement.

I guess you are either talking out of your ass or only know unemployed college kids... either way, that makes you look bad.

Ahahaha, who's talking out of his ass?

I don't have any "sides" to this. I think the "protests" and "movements" are all controlled (tea party and OWS)

But do you honestly think that everyday people who work for a living actually "support" this "movement"? I don't think so. I don't even think they give it a second thought in their everyday lives.

Most things that we are told by the media have the "nation's attention" really don't. It has the media's attention for sure. But do I think my Dad or my brothers (or myself) give two shits about any of the nonsense going on?

Hell no. My dad is more worried about his cattle ranch and would laugh derisively at all of that. And my brothers are too busy with their own businesses as well.

I DO get out a bit here in Vegas and see people from all over the country and the world at the clubs and casinos.

I have yet to have even ONE person discuss the "OWS" with me.

I have heard politics discussed. I've heard talk about taxes and other of the usual conversations that go on in social settings.

Not once have I heard anything about the OWS or Tea Party for that matter.

That shit is mostly "important" to the media because they think it helps their ratings. And it makes good discussion on message boards. But for middle class working people in everyday life across the country?
No.

You?

8char

Where are you seeing all of these solid middle class supporters of OW again? :1orglaugh

Like I said, you don't have to be at a park to support a movement.

The same people who were outraged when the Supreme Court ruled corps can freely donate to candidates are the people who are pissed at Wall Street.

Also, media is a biz. They give people what they want and nothing more. If there is coverage it is because people are eating it up. Both the tea party and OWS.

I am not "seeing" anything (like most are on the TV) ... I am talking to people. I don't know anybody willing to quit their job and go to NYC (which admittedly will probably mean this will fizzle) but that doesn't mean they don't hate the fact that Wall Street got bailouts and is doing so well yet they have foreclosures sitting on their street empty for two years or always pay their bills yet had their interest rates increase.

OCCUPY FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC!!!

Banks aren't any more greedy than Apple is! Blaming the financial crisis on greed is like blaming an airplane crash on gravity. The reason the bubble caused by low interest rates was allowed to get to such ridiculous proportions was because Fannie and Freddie said to banks: "You make whatever loans you want, and you don't have to worry about whether they get paid back. We'll buy them off you, and you won't lose any money. You can make safe loans with low profits, or dangerous loans with high profits, and either way you won't lose money."



They should be protesting the government, not the banks, IMHO.

Yeah, but to "support" a movement you have to agree with it and feel the same.
I'm not sure that everyday people in this country feel one way or another about them. And my gut feeling is that millions of rednecks and people living in small towns across this country think the whole thing is stupid.

Also as to the media coverage and people "eating it up"...the media was also 24/7 Anna Nicole Smith a couple of years back. They also were 24/7 Libya a few weeks ago. You get the idea...they over-do newstories. And when they decide to push whatever they push on a particular week, it's almost like there IS no other news in the world.

Just like the OWS thing. Suddenly we don't seem to have troops in Afghanistan, that whole Libya thing is forgotten, nobody in the world has died, that whole credit rating thing doesn't exist...

A lot of this is pure media driven. Not saying that there isn't more to it...but I am pretty sure that IF all the television cameras went away, the "protest" would be over by the end of the day.

Exactly. None of what is happening could have happened without the greed in Washington D.C. and our corrupt politicians.

So the corporate-run media outlets tell you to blame "the government" for all of your problems, instead of the corporations, and that makes perfect sense to you guys? No nuanced conflict of interest there?

As far as I can tell, shy of the media's distortion, the OWS movement is against BOTH corp AND government corruption, so I have no idea why either side wants to marginalize them.

Hate the way government works? Then maybe this is for you?...

http://www.getmoneyout.com/

It is very specific.

What are you talking about? What "corporate-run media outlet" have you heard say that?

Dude...you are so caught up in being a "democrat" that you can't see things clearly.
I for one, haven't heard any newscasts say "blame the govt., not corps"

Matter of fact, all I hear is the opposite. The media in our country doesn't question our govt. at all.

As I said in another post...back during the 1960's and 1970's the media was all over the govt.

Now? They just "report" whatever is on the sheet of paper they receive from the White House press secretary.

For the last 20 years or so I don't see the press EVER do any real investigative reporting on the corruption going on in Washington.

Whatever happened to REAL protest in this country?

Back during the LAST REAL protest (against the Vietnam War)...people didn't give a damn if Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat or Nixon was a Republican.

It was all about QUESTIONING AUTHORITY and fighting the good fight.

Now it's all about: "I'm a Democrat! Hear me roar!" Or "I'm a Republican! Hear me roar!"

It's pathetic.

I haven't seen any pro-Republican or pro-Democratic banners at any of the OWS rallies.

MSNBC just made he statement, "one month in, and the OWS movement goes international" While this voice-over was read, they ONLY showed burning cars and violent images.

The media will not benefit from the movement, so they will continue to vilify it.

ahhhh, if only that is what the protesters were protesting.

I'm not sure what your point is? I think we're mis-communicating.

What I'm saying is that the people debating this on this message board have a tendency to agree 100% with their "side" (you do that a lot...either the Democrats NEVER do anything you disagree with, or you are caught up in an "us against them" mentality)

And I'm not attacking you. I think you're an intelligent guy. I'm just debating it with you.

I think it's unhealthy for people to follow party lines or ideological lines. Nobody in OWS has to call themselves a Dem and nobody in the Tea Party has to call themselves a Repub.

It's pretty obvious what the overall ideology of these "movements" is.