With all the Progressive propaganda that it seems the kids have embraced on college campuses these days, it makes you wonder how they can embrace that foolish, dead end philosophy? That also made me look at how many kids don't work after school and in the summer as teens these days.

One strange trend is that around these parts, the suburban kids are in no hurry to get their Driver's License or Learners Permit. I will tell you I was there on my birthday when I was a teen. No license = no wheels = no job or dates. Around here, 15 year olds are content to have the parents chauffeur them around. It's not like these families can't spring for a cheap used car for the kids. I will admit, traffic is extraordinarily heavy as our metro area expands like Jabba the Hut in a doughnut shop, and that can be intimidating.

That got me wondering about work. Youth sports are 12 month/year deals these days. If your kid shows promise, they are training all year long. Football starts here in July and runs until Nov/Dec. They have Winter weight training and conditioning, they have May Spring training for 3 weeks on the field. June they have 7 on 7 passing camps.

Basketball is year around. School in the winter, AAU the rest of the year. Baseball starts throwing in December, the season here has already started for high school and that runs to May. May begins Travel ball that runs until school starts August 1. Then there is Fall ball.

So many of the kids are tied up with endless sports, they don't have time to work.

What about employers? Do they have menial jobs that teens can take and and enter the work force? All this "living wage" bullcrap has made casual labor expensive. Nobody expects people to live on $7/Hr, but that would be a start for teen, IF it were legal. Paying a kid $10-12/Hr for entry level work now makes employers pause before hiring somebody "to help out around here".

Point I'm getting at is asking - have too many kids failed to learn a work ethic, had that responsibility and duty to show up everyday, on time and ready to work? Has this led to the pampered entitled mentality now seen on college campuses where they think they can defeat any idea they don't like by shouting it down?

Try shouting down the landlord when you can't pay the rent, or the grocery store when the EBT card runs low?

Maybe I've got it wrong, but I certainly think if this bunch had been collecting some sort of paycheck for work before they went to college, they'd be more realistic and less idealistic. Maybe I'm just another "old dude" who doesn't get it. What I got at their age was highway construction, pumping concrete, refurbishing floor jacks and hand set concrete forms, and waiting tables. Then I got wise and went to baseball umpires school and made more money n less hours and had fun doing it. That was my first lesson in upward mobility. Gain a valuable skill, make more money. All that served me well in college. 8 am Organic Chemistry was much preferable to 6:30 a.m. running the jack hammer in the middle of I-85.

Anyone else see the trend?

I share a lot of these perceptions and I wonder at times how much of it is just the traditional old fhart's idea that the up and coming generation is worthless. I think it's worse than that. I do see a lot of them that seem completely helpless/hopeless. On the other hand, I do know a number of young people who are go-getters and will make something of themselves. One of my grandsons is a Navy nuclear guy now...I have no worries about his future. His brother will be 19 in April and will have completed his junior year in college in May. He has always worked in his spare time since he was a young teen. Last summer he was old enough to work all summer as a day laborer at the power plant where my son works. This summer he has been recruited for a summer internship with a firm in Kansas City. They have a specific IT project for him to do, they are going to pay him $23/hr which is pretty good for a kid, and give him a living allowance to go live in KC. They are also going to open a 401K for him. They told him they're not providing this internship as a public service, this is how they recruit. If he does well this summer there is a "real" job for him when he graduates in another year. I don't worry about that boy either. There are glimmers of hope on the horizon.

Parents in 2017 tend to think every little Johnny is going to end up playing college ball and then onto the NFL. Of course there have always been a couple sets of parents like this in each class through the years, but now they seem to be the rule and not the exception.

This country is gonna have a whole lot of qualified gas station attendants in the next 5-10 years.



Dave

Young people don't know how it feels to be the bottom man doing something they don't enjoy. Doing things you don't like helps you to focus in on something you will like for your adult career.
My son earned four athletic letters most of his HS years. He had the great opportunity to work in a fly shop in Idaho between his junior and senior year of HS. I advised him to work it out with his football coach since he would miss summer workouts. They came to an understanding and he spent the summer in an environment he loved. The days could be long, but he got to fish at least a part of every day. That kid also got his DL as soon as he was eligible. He went back to Idaho three days after HS graduation, and then drove from there to college. He's just one you don't have to worry about.

If even that. Most of them wouldn't even know how to make change against a ten dollar bill. Sad!

My daughter is still on her permit, so wife or I have to be with her..

Yesterday, she was meeting a couple friends of hers to go see Phantom o' the Opera, and one of the girls was late.

Turns out she has her license, and her dad wasn't going to move off the sofa on a Sunday afternoon (can't blame him).

Gave her the keys to the car, but told her that it needed gas, and air in the driver's front - acquiring both was why she was running late.

She seemed a little miffed that air costs a buck these days, but apparently - she has a job, so she paid for it.

And the gas.

Way to go Dad!

There's a gas station here and I think the owners make their employees learn to count change properly. If he or his wife are around they'll do it, but if not they just hand it to you.

Some of them seriously struggle...




Dave

JFC, ain't that the truth. My son and my buddy's son got cut from the all-star baseball team last week, after try-outs. The reactions couldn't have been different by the 2 boys or the 2 dads.

Jeff and his son... (son) "I'm done with baseball. That team is going to suck anyway." (jeff) "I'm pulling my son from this league. I need my money back."

He called the coaches and said his son is better than 15 of the 22 kids picked. Jeff also called the coach and berated him for 15 minuets. I did witness this. Jeff is a great friend, but I was truly embarrassed by his reaction.

Me and jack... (jack) "Dad, we are going to have a bad ass American League team. There were a lot of good kids cut." (Me) "Are you mad you got cut?" (jack) "Yep. They'll pay. I'm going to hit 10 jacks and showed them they missed... but look at our team. We're going to be bad ass. Can you call the coach and see what I need to work on?"

I did call the coach. He said he needs work on getting behind ground balls instead of stabbing a glove at them.

The neighbor across the street is a prime example. Their teenage girl plays softball and yes she is good. She will probably wind up with some kind of scholarship. Crap, the money they will have spent on softballin 8-10yrs they will probably had been able to send here to any college she wanted to go. They spend every weekend somewhere playing ball. When I say somewhere, I don't mean local. They go to florida, Vegas ..... I don't know how they do it. They are not wealthy by any means.

Good for you and for him.




Dave

The real question is, where are the colleges getting money to offer scholarships for softball/volleyball/soccer/baseball/etc??? Football is probably the only sport (maybe basketball) at some colleges that generates any real revenue. I doubt any of them generate anything at D-II schools.

The local first response wildfire fighting organization (DFPA) is a first rate outfit. They are great at jumping on fires and putting them out (not "managing them as the Forest Service does).
For years they ran a program for 16-18 year olds during the summer to provide a youth employment opportunity. They would not fight fires and could not use chainsaws, but using hand tools they worked to reduce the fuel load around houses, etc. They were paid. Then the Federal Department of Labor came along (about 5 years ago) and prohibited that type of work. So the local kids lost a job training opportunity and the DFPA lost summer help and a pipeline for kids to get into fire fighting.

And the vast majority of college football and basketball programs loose money. In the typical year, only about 10 football teams make money, and only ONE makes money every year, Ohio State.

When I was about about 12, a very wise teenager around 17 told me you needed a car to be able to get pussy. He said do all you could to get one when you turn legal at 16 so you would have a way to take girls on dates. By the time I was 16 I had 2500.00. Bought a truck, got first pussy soon after.

I see a lot of that in the difference between my wife and her younger sister. My in-laws are good people that probably didn't have a whole lot growing up. They had my wife in their early 20s and didn't have a whole lot then so my wife ended up working almost full time from the time she turned 16 to now. Fast forward to the little sister that's almost 20 years younger and it's the typical milleniall. Never held a job until she started teaching school after college and didn't get her driver's license till she graduated highschool. It's almost like they were trying to keep her dependent on them as long as possible. Hard to believe that the same two people could produce two such opposite kids but i think its just he expectations they put on them.

It's a different world than the one we grew up in. Starting when I was 14, when the end of the school year was coming up my dad would let me know what job he'd lined up for me. It was always manual labor and I learned a lot from that. Number 1, I learned what hard work really was. Number 2, I learned how to get along with the rest of the crew. Number 3, I learned the value of an education.

I think all teenagers should do manual labor for the same reasons.

hatari I am with you. I grew up in Atlanta, Chamblee to be exact.
Graduated from high school in 1968. Spent the summer of '68 working as a brick mason's helper at an apartment complex at Johnson Ferry and Ashford Dunwoody Roads.
Ten hours in the hot sun humping those bricks and mortar, one helper for every 4 masons. Brutal work and dangerous too, up 15 feet in the air on those scaffolds. I saw guys get hurt.

After 3 1/2 months of that, taking Chemistry and Algebra and Trig classes at Ga. Tech that September seemed like a breeze.
I worked construction summers for four years and later worked it full time for several more years.

You are right, a year as a brick mason's helper would get the minds right for these sissy millennials.
Most of 'em couldn't hack it.

Hatari, good post. I worried about all that too, but now wonder if we're the same as other old farts on kids since forever.

We hire a short ton of high school and college kids at the bank and even the worst of them have a plan. The current crop is a good bunch and a good number of the ones before stayed with us and really upgraded our staff.

I will say this though, most think very poorly about Trump and his ways. But they didn't have any good to say about Hildabeast either. Seemed mostly disappointed with the choices.

KC

I played hockey. Pussy was easy before I could drive.

the 900 pound gorilla in the room of course, is that none of these little snowflakes were born that way. They come from liberal or negligent families, that enable and support them.
Communists are made, not born.

I played football,but lived in country. You you had to have wheels. What is hockey? We had fights with cow hockey. Is that what you are talking about??

It wasn't until pretty recently that I realized one of the big differences in the way I grew up and the way the kids grow up now. I came from a family with four kids of modest means. If I wanted a stereo, motorcycle, car, college education, or anything else beyond basic life's necessities, I had better get after it, because it wasn't happening any other way.

Last year, I was talking with my mechanic, and his neighbors RE-MORTGAGED their HOUSE to buy their little princess a more competitive cutting horse to ride on the high school rodeo circuit.

His comment was most apropos: "Some poor bastard is going to marry that girl".

I believe that if a person is willing to work, no matter what the economy is like, they will be employed. Might not be the greatest job, but they will have one.

You are presuming a certain value to the quality of their labor. If minimum wage is more than they are able to contribute via their labor, only a fool would employ them.

Lol !

Read every word of your post,Jeff and only agree somewhat as much of this has to be borne by the parents for failing to TELL the kids that this is way it's going to be and it's not negotiable when it comes to a summer job.

Step daughter turned 16 and failed every time she took her written DL test. ????? hmmmm,.... she's no dummy.

Another, hmmmmm,....???? Told her the computer was goin' bye bye if she failed again. ACED IT the next time.

Addiction to all the social media was the culprit. Finally told her that it was time to meet some of her friends that actually were flesh and blood with a heartbeat.

I have to admit-guilty as charged. Exactly as described. Pitching clinics, hitting sessions, one on one lessons, tournaments all over the upper midwest. She had a ball, and thoroughly enjoyed her self. It did lead to a scholarship at a small Div. 01 program, but in retrospect, the money would have been much better spent focusing on her college education, than her ability to throw a backdoor curveball. Ball's done now, and she's really dug into her school work. The kid works two jobs and goes to school picking up the classes she couldn't get in when she was playing ball. She's gonna make a difference in this world, it's just going to take her a while longer.

Maybe in a way I've been lucky that my son never really took to sports seriously, and I certainly don't knock those that do...I'm more likely to see him and his buds taking apart a dirt bike, quad or these days a car to fix or customize one thing or another. All that tinkering takes $$$ and this past summer he worked 6 days a week between cooking / prepping in a resturant and working on my side work crew pruning, planting and doing clean ups. Sure I help him out here and there with extra things or unexpected repairs but the work ethic is there and he is as far from a snowflake as I would want him to be.
For the most part I see similar qualities in his inner circle of friends so I believe there is hope for our younger generation....They are not all negatively influenced by the bleeding heart, left leaning entitled crowd.

I guess I was lucky.Starting at 10,my summers were filled with farm work.Watermelons,hay,cattle work,crop harvest of rice,corn,milo and cotton.I remember a lot of sweat,blisters and sunburn.But you know,I turned out OK.I had a lot of drive and ambition and also a little money in my pocket.I learned a lot from everything I did and have carried those life experiences throughout my life.I learned how to be independent and not dependent and how to manage my money too.I may not have everything I want,but I have everything I need and I can live with that.

Blame the parents... Can't speak to the urban areas, today. However, I started shoveling snow and mowing grass when I was 13. As I got older, started cleaning dog kennels for the local vet after school. My parents took care of my basic needs. But, if I wanted anything extra, i had to go earn it. I think there are still jobs out there if the kids are (a) willing to look for them, and, (b) willing to work them when they find them.

Here in the more rural area, I am not aware of a single farmer who could not use "good" help during the summer. In tobacco: setting, chopping, topping, dropping sticks, harvesting, housing, stripping. Plus hay, plus working cattle...

If there is a reason that kids are not working, it is because the parents are not "encouraging them" to work. My son decided he did not want to work a full time job after graduating high school. Surprise, surprise... Three months after I put him out of the house, he was an E1 Airman Basic. Six years later he is now an E5 SSgt...

I agree with pretty much all of that. Grandad sed to say "Americans have been off the farm too long".

Our school district focuses more on sports than academics.


My opinion is that a kid will learn more about life and working with people if he has a job, rather than being on several sports teams throughout high school.

Oh, there is plenty time to work after high school they say,......

Sports teaches them essential life lessons they say......

Again, I agree with this. My dad TOLD me I was getting a summer job, and one at Christmas break. Otherwise, what 17 year old wants to run a jackhammer standing on the median in the middle of one of America's busiest Interestates in 97º weather all for the princely sum of $3.75/hr? I did it, and was happy to have the job. (well, maybe not happy, but satisfied)

The kids work pretty dang hard in my area. Weed, booze, and drugs ain't cheep.

You musta been an ugly bastard. I lived in the country and got pussy from the time I was 14.

Sisters and cousins don't count.

My grandson will be 19 this year! When he was 14 he started mowing yards, shoveling snow ECT. At 16 he came and said he couldn't get all the work done, that people w3re giving him! I told him to get a business license and hire help. Couldn't get the license at that age. He started working two of his friends for a cut of the pay. When he became 18 he got the license,and started paying his help. He has 63 coustomers, from the original lawn jobs to businesses, three trucks, two with snow plows, and three trailers full of equipment! During high school he paid to get the jobs done, took a cut, while playing football and wrestling. He has 7 employees now at 19 and is taking business management at our community college nights. I think there is still help for some of our youth! His mom raised him because his dad turned out to be a criminal! I helped with the first mower, weed eater and ask for repayment at 5% interest. He's the only kid I know who can make a dime scream dollar!

Maybe not but my buddies sisters sure did.

I had summer/after school jobs as did my now 25YO son. Wasn't an option for either of us.
Mom had our son a job lined up with the local parks & rec dept. the day he was old enough to get a workers permit. he worked there, for me and cut firewood all the way through college. Grounds crew, LL ball games, umpiring and tourneys. In college he worked intramural sports.
And the day he was eligible, he got his DL.

My kids have been easily able to find lawns to mow, leaves to rake, churches to clean, and tables to wait.

They all play sports also, which have taught them a lot of lessons.

In the end, good parents generally make good kids. Lack of parents makes for bad kids.

Another thing I notice is people not staying at jobs long term. A couple years and then on to something else.