At NewDeal2.0, Lindsey Snyder writes, Twenty-Something Turmoil: A Tale of Unemployment From a Would-be Young Professional:
Twenty-somethings with a sense of entitlement, high expectations, and a stalled economy have to learn to become entrepreneurial. But how?
Being jobless in the Great Recession is about much more than making ends meet. While we struggle to pay every bill, we — the freshly minted unemployed — carry around psyches that have come undone in ways that we never expected. I should know. I am in my twenties. Educated. Hard-working. Intellectually proactive. And unable to find a job.
I often find solace playing the blame game: If it weren’t for those baby boomers and their Great Society, I never would have been convinced that if I did everything I was supposed to do in life and played by (most of) the rules, one day I would be successful — or at least employed. In high school, I woke up early, did my homework, studied for exams and participated in extracurriculars I wasn’t always very good at, following a grueling schedule that was exhausting and not always rewarding. I remember justifying my heavy schedule because I wanted to get into a good college. I enjoyed college, but I still worked hard and did plenty of things I didn’t want to because in the back of my mind lingered the self-righteous idea that someone like me would naturally be rewarded with a good job.
But here I am, three years after graduation, and it seems that I was wrong.
After months and months of job interviews, I’ve gone from the jobless-can-be-liberating phase into the feeling-bad-for-myself/coping phase. Which leads me back to the baby boomers. I confess that I’m torn up by the idea that my generation has taken a giant step back from what that previous generation was able to expect and achieve in life. Those of us that are fortunate enough to have jobs will never, it seems, have the same opportunities our parents did. Our salaries will never be as high, despite the higher cost of living. If we get jobs at all. ...
Really it is an excellent time to be an entrepreneur at anything. As the New York Times recently put it, “The enthusiasm for social networking and mobile apps has venture capitalists clamoring to give money to young companies. The exuberance has given rise to an elite club of start-ups — all younger than seven years and all worth billions.”
Now I just wish I knew how to be entrepreneurial. The problem is — no one ever taught me that. I don’t believe that the word ever came up formally in any component of my education, which was so geared toward standardized testing that it was rare that I was challenged to think outside the box. The academic environment has grown so obsessed with testing that it is as if passing a test is the only reason to learn anything. The teach-to-the-test syndrome is the ultimate antithesis of being entrepreneurial.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:
The New York Times has a story on yet another report the government has kept under wraps for a substantial period of time (in this case over a year). The Interior Department has a study showing that "inducements" offered to oil companies could allow drilling companies in the Gulf of Mexico to escape tens of billions of dollars in royalties that they would otherwise pay the government for oil and gas produced in areas that belong to American taxpayers.
But the study predicts that the inducements would cause only a tiny increase in production even if they were offered without some of the limitations now in place.
It also suggests that the cost of that additional oil could be as much as $80 a barrel, far more than the government would have to pay if it simply bought the oil on its own. |
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Tonight's poll uses dates that not everyone agrees on regarding Generations X and Y. Some authors start as early as 1961 for Generation X and end in the late '70s. Others make the choice seen in the poll, 1965-1981. Likewise, Generation Y has been variously described as starting in the late '70s or early '80s and ending anywhere from the late '90s to 2001. The poll has been set at 1982-2001. (The poll does not include Generation Z, the "Net Generation." If you were born in 2002 or later, you should be in bed.) Generations are artificial constructs. While there is some value to such distinctions, generationism - like racism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism - makes bad assumptions. E.g., Boomers are self-indulgent sell-outs; Xers are slackers. While there are obvious similarities and some shared experiences within generations, there are as many differences among some members of a generational cohort as there are among the cohorts themselves.