Posted on 09/01/2011 5:13:17 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
Meet the members of what might be called Generation Limbo: highly educated 20-somethings, whose careers are stuck in neutral, coping with dead-end jobs and listless prospects.
And so they wait: for the economy to turn, for good jobs to materialize, for their lucky break. Some do so bitterly, frustrated that their well-mapped careers have gone astray. Others do so anxiously, wondering how they are going to pay their rent, their school loans, their living expenses — sometimes resorting to once-unthinkable government handouts.
“We did everything we were supposed to,” said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. “What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?” said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.
Some of Ms. Morales’s classmates have found themselves on welfare. “You don’t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Morales, who estimates that a half-dozen of her friends are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A few are even helping younger graduates figure out how to apply. “We are passing on these traditions on how to work in the adult world as working poor,” Ms. Morales said.
But then there are people like Ms. Kelly and Ms. Klein, who are more laissez-faire. With the job market still bleak, their motto might as well be: “No career? No prospects? No worries!” (Well, at least for the time being.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, I don't know. "Artists" typically make about that much.
Sometimes, perfect debate one-liners come up. Too bad none of the GOP candidates appear to have the balls to say things like this.
Yeah, well looks like I've identified the problem right there.
I said, “And many of those young people VOTED FOR OBAMA!!!”
That is true. I didn’t they gave us Obama.
I so hate this meme.
I am an artist. More correctly, I am a limited production craftsperson. I have invented, developed and marketed my products for over 40 years. I earn a living. I have purchased my own health insurance except for a few years when a spouse had corporate-provided family insurance, back in the 1970s.
My walls are decorated with my 2-D work from 35 years ago. It still gets praise. I know it will not support me. But my functional products will and have.
Creative people should be instinctive capitalists. I do not understand why they are not. I went to the same classes they did and did not turn into a socialist. I was liberal for a while, but never a socialist.
A functioning brain, some skills, a good pair of trained hands: these are the means of production. When I say this in artistic venues, many people look blank. When I say it craft venues, everyone nods agreement.
What exactly would be a job in the "arts"? Does she even know?
Chances are whatever "the arts" is would be something supported by the wealthy and the new wealthy. The same people they vote to destroy. Life has consequences.
The BEST thing that could happen is some of these young adults do actually work as bartenders, waitresses and valets for a while.
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