The whole reason I'm writing this blog is because I'm currently unemployed. Unemployment aside I wanted to discuss what has always drove me crazy when looking at job listings. I'm talking about the disappearance of entry level jobs. People will argue furiously about this topic and point the finger at the individual not "succeeding" however I don't think it is usually because of a lack of effort. You go to school and have an interest in the sciences. You got great grades in high school but didn't come from a family with thousands of dollars in the pink piggy bank. You apply for some scholarships and grants but they only cover a fraction of your tuition costs. If only you had that shotgun marriage in high school or got knocked up your college expenses would be oh so less of a burden. Wait how much native American do you have in you? Oh so sorry not quite enough nice try though.
So you go to school you continue to get exceedingly good grades and you pop out into the world a newborn science major. You are proud, ambitious and in debt. You scoff at the rich kid who sat next to you in whatever advanced class for the fourth time because his parents had a direct deposit set up with the school's bank account to let him keep taking the same class until the professor actually felt sorry for him. You can't afford to go to grad school so you play the job market. Who knows maybe your employer will pay your tuition later on down the road. You always hear people talking about that. If you want to retain your mental sanity you know you can't live with your parents for very long. So you take a retail job to limp by and afford a cheap place while you apply for a "real" job. As your looking the same two words of "Must have..." keep popping out at you. You have some of this and some of that but the puzzle piece never really fits quite right. Perhaps the job title of "Assistant" was a typo because you had always thought being an assistant to someone else meant learning the trade and a good entry level position to get your foot in the door. Not quite.
Where do you get the three years WORKING experience using x,y, and z software? Where do you get the WORKING experience using program languages a,b,c nevermind you have been tooling around with a and b for several years now on your own time. How do you take the 2 years of graduate level courses at $400 dollars a credit HOUR when you can only get a crappy job. In the garbage bin your resume goes!
So where is a newborn graduate to go? Well perhaps you take the admin or data entry job for $10-$13 figuring you'll get your foot in the door and something will open up. However upon arriving you find there are many others within the organization waiting and plotting as well. At this rate you'll be waiting a few years just to get a chance to get that entry level position. You know if they trained you for 2 weeks you'd have it down flat. So will everyone else though. Welcome to life. Lets hope in a few years time when you are at a respectable enough position you won't be so burnt out that you'll still have enough drive and motivation to get back into school at the age of 30. Maybe then you'll be able to get that entry level position in something you actually enjoy.
I've been accused of whining a lot but this isn't my story. This is the story of most people I know and went to school with. Perhaps this is an accurate view of what many are going through out there. Perhaps I need to get more upstanding friends.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Real Estate And Real Wages
Warning this article is from a middle to lower class perspective. Please do not take offense if you do not agree!
I am constantly frustrated by the price of houses especially where I live. If you want something decent in a decent neighborhood be prepared to spend $225,000+ easy. Most homes in decent areas sell for $300K+. What I would like to know is who can afford all of these homes on top of their Audi and Lexus cars with three kids? I know wages aren't increasing a smudge but everything else around us is. The housing bubble has finally burst but it is only affecting the lower end of the housing market. These overpriced homes outside the ARM fiasco are still increasing in price. So with everything increasing in price how do people continue to afford these things when wages never increase? When will we hit the point when house prices have gone too far and people truly can't afford houses anymore? Either the bubble is just starting and we have a long way ahead of us or it is only going to affect the lower end of the market. Either way it seems a long way off before those in the middle class actually living within their means will be able to afford a slice of the pie.
Thats just the thing though. Living within your means seems to be a rarity these days. However to me stepping over that line into extreme debt just to get the nice car or the nice house scares the crap out of me. I look at it in a similar fashion as having handcuffs put on you. With the nice car and the nice house comes servitude. You have to pay off that debt and still support your family so you stick with the job you may not like. You put up with the crap and your job knows it so they will just pile it on more. To me it seems that corporations know and take advantage of people who are stuck. This is why wages are not increasing.
Because we exist in a debt fueled society there is no need to increase the pay for employees because everyone has to work now and can't sit on the line to wait for something better. You no longer sell yourself to companies and companies no longer sell themselves to you because you are forced to work. A wage slave if you will. If you are a wage slave then all that is needed is to pay you enough to keep you stuck where you are at thus providing a lifetime of continual servitude for mediocre pay. Once you get near retirement chasing the carrot on a stick that is your pension out the door you go and in with the college grad with $60K in debt! Let the next wave begin.
Who made you want the damn Lexus anyway? Why do you want it? Perhaps if we weren't so entrenched in debt things would be a bit brighter. Until then we are an army of 9-5 zombies. Working to continue working. Living is what you do for 14 out of 365 days if you can afford it. However I do have to say that new Lexus IS-F is pretty nice!
I am constantly frustrated by the price of houses especially where I live. If you want something decent in a decent neighborhood be prepared to spend $225,000+ easy. Most homes in decent areas sell for $300K+. What I would like to know is who can afford all of these homes on top of their Audi and Lexus cars with three kids? I know wages aren't increasing a smudge but everything else around us is. The housing bubble has finally burst but it is only affecting the lower end of the housing market. These overpriced homes outside the ARM fiasco are still increasing in price. So with everything increasing in price how do people continue to afford these things when wages never increase? When will we hit the point when house prices have gone too far and people truly can't afford houses anymore? Either the bubble is just starting and we have a long way ahead of us or it is only going to affect the lower end of the market. Either way it seems a long way off before those in the middle class actually living within their means will be able to afford a slice of the pie.
Thats just the thing though. Living within your means seems to be a rarity these days. However to me stepping over that line into extreme debt just to get the nice car or the nice house scares the crap out of me. I look at it in a similar fashion as having handcuffs put on you. With the nice car and the nice house comes servitude. You have to pay off that debt and still support your family so you stick with the job you may not like. You put up with the crap and your job knows it so they will just pile it on more. To me it seems that corporations know and take advantage of people who are stuck. This is why wages are not increasing.
Because we exist in a debt fueled society there is no need to increase the pay for employees because everyone has to work now and can't sit on the line to wait for something better. You no longer sell yourself to companies and companies no longer sell themselves to you because you are forced to work. A wage slave if you will. If you are a wage slave then all that is needed is to pay you enough to keep you stuck where you are at thus providing a lifetime of continual servitude for mediocre pay. Once you get near retirement chasing the carrot on a stick that is your pension out the door you go and in with the college grad with $60K in debt! Let the next wave begin.
Who made you want the damn Lexus anyway? Why do you want it? Perhaps if we weren't so entrenched in debt things would be a bit brighter. Until then we are an army of 9-5 zombies. Working to continue working. Living is what you do for 14 out of 365 days if you can afford it. However I do have to say that new Lexus IS-F is pretty nice!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Global Warming or Global Ignorance? Two Choices That Will Save The World!
Oh global warming its such an interesting topic isn't it? You better accept it or be hailed as a heretic! Global warming is the new religion, catch phrase, company slogan, and biggest concern on the minds of many. The ego of man knows no bounds. Only we could think that a normal global climate cycle is a direct cause of our actions. Don't fart or you'll increase the temperature dammit! The global warming debate aside I think everyone can agree that it is probably in our best interests to be more environmentally friendly. Humankind needs to go from being a burden on the entire planet's other inhabitants to being a part of it. Stop acting like a virus and start acting like a normal species. However being green isn't so clear cut. This for me is where the conspiracy begins. If everyone is so interested then there are many things we could be doing right now but aren't. Lets take a look at two ideas that I came up with while sitting in rush hour traffic.
Lets start with the biggest and most obvious thing (to me at least) that people who want to lessen their impact on the earth can do. Oh this one inspires the same sort of reaction you would get from SUV drivers when you tell them they should drive a smaller car. This right is ingrained in so many people's heads as something that they just have to do, but do you really? Did you ever stop and think about why you feel this way and come up with a legitimate answer? Any idea yet of what I'm talking about? Its breeding of course. Choose not to have kids and you just prevented a lifetime of waste and pollution from entering our atmosphere. The planet is getting way too crowded and people pumping out 4-6 kids like a farm are not helping anything. Each one of those kids will consume, waste, and intoxicate in various ways during their entire life. Coming from a large family many of them will in turn probably produce 4-6 kids themselves thus increasing the strain on our planet's resources. So if you truly want to join the green movement and pretend you are a contributing member of society then contribute by not breeding! Oh how communist of me to suggest such a thing but it's true. You can buy this biggest truck you want and be as wasteful as you possibly can and it will still be less of an impact than if you had kids.
The second less provocative, perhaps more interesting solution to becoming green is very attractive indeed. However nobody is really stepping up to the plate and doing it. To me this is just as obvious as not having kids yet inspires people instead of angering them. I'm talking about telecommuting! Why in this modern age are we still driving an hour to go do a data entry job? If companies are so eager to do their part to help save the planet then why don't they let their workers do what they can from their own home? Well without becoming too Marxist and droning on about how the man is trying to keep everyone down I can't really come up with an answer. Do a job search today for work from home and telecommuting and you will enter a world of scams and pyramid schemes. Just think for a second how much more productive you would be if your company allowed you to work from home. I bet you could do your 9 hours of office work in 1 hour. You would be motivated to not only work faster but be more productive as well because you don't want to lose this new telecommuting option your company has provided and when you are done with your work you are free to do as you please. No more wasting the day around browsing the internet every 20 minutes while at the office for 9 hours a day. Just think of the impact this would have on not just your personal life but on society as a whole. The company would save money by not having to provide so much resources to house a large number of employees. Right now more people live in crowded dirty metro areas but most people would rather live somewhere rural. Well if you could do your job from home you could live anywhere you wanted. You wouldn't have to worry about how long of a commute you'd have. This would completely eliminate your daily contributions of emissions while sitting in traffic with every other schmuck while going to and from work. Getting your work done faster would allow you much more time to pursue your own hobbies and interests. You could become a much more positive contributor to your community. You could help grow produce for the local farmers market to help combat rising food prices. You could volunteer for anything without worrying about how it will take up the limited amount of personal time you have because of your daily commute to the office. You could even spend more time tinkering in your garage and invent that alternative fuel solution everyone is looking for! Who knows how many possibilities there are. Need to talk to someone face to face? Well thats what a freaking webcam is for! Who likes anyone they work with anyway? VPN into your work network and do a virtual meeting. Why sit for 2 hours in a meeting just to be told something that could be explained in an email?
How do we get people to start doing these things? Well I have no idea if you can get people to stop having kids. Perhaps you can get them to have less kids that would be more reasonable. I think the biggest thing we could do to improve our individual lives, the economy, and the planet is to start moving towards offering more telecommuting jobs. In my mind the impact of converting hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of people's jobs to a home based one is mind boggling. So get to it you capitalists. Stop pretending you care for PR sake and start doing it. Remember we are directly responsible for Global Warming and only we can change it! You don't want to be directly responsible for the extinction of the polar bear now do you?
Lets start with the biggest and most obvious thing (to me at least) that people who want to lessen their impact on the earth can do. Oh this one inspires the same sort of reaction you would get from SUV drivers when you tell them they should drive a smaller car. This right is ingrained in so many people's heads as something that they just have to do, but do you really? Did you ever stop and think about why you feel this way and come up with a legitimate answer? Any idea yet of what I'm talking about? Its breeding of course. Choose not to have kids and you just prevented a lifetime of waste and pollution from entering our atmosphere. The planet is getting way too crowded and people pumping out 4-6 kids like a farm are not helping anything. Each one of those kids will consume, waste, and intoxicate in various ways during their entire life. Coming from a large family many of them will in turn probably produce 4-6 kids themselves thus increasing the strain on our planet's resources. So if you truly want to join the green movement and pretend you are a contributing member of society then contribute by not breeding! Oh how communist of me to suggest such a thing but it's true. You can buy this biggest truck you want and be as wasteful as you possibly can and it will still be less of an impact than if you had kids.
The second less provocative, perhaps more interesting solution to becoming green is very attractive indeed. However nobody is really stepping up to the plate and doing it. To me this is just as obvious as not having kids yet inspires people instead of angering them. I'm talking about telecommuting! Why in this modern age are we still driving an hour to go do a data entry job? If companies are so eager to do their part to help save the planet then why don't they let their workers do what they can from their own home? Well without becoming too Marxist and droning on about how the man is trying to keep everyone down I can't really come up with an answer. Do a job search today for work from home and telecommuting and you will enter a world of scams and pyramid schemes. Just think for a second how much more productive you would be if your company allowed you to work from home. I bet you could do your 9 hours of office work in 1 hour. You would be motivated to not only work faster but be more productive as well because you don't want to lose this new telecommuting option your company has provided and when you are done with your work you are free to do as you please. No more wasting the day around browsing the internet every 20 minutes while at the office for 9 hours a day. Just think of the impact this would have on not just your personal life but on society as a whole. The company would save money by not having to provide so much resources to house a large number of employees. Right now more people live in crowded dirty metro areas but most people would rather live somewhere rural. Well if you could do your job from home you could live anywhere you wanted. You wouldn't have to worry about how long of a commute you'd have. This would completely eliminate your daily contributions of emissions while sitting in traffic with every other schmuck while going to and from work. Getting your work done faster would allow you much more time to pursue your own hobbies and interests. You could become a much more positive contributor to your community. You could help grow produce for the local farmers market to help combat rising food prices. You could volunteer for anything without worrying about how it will take up the limited amount of personal time you have because of your daily commute to the office. You could even spend more time tinkering in your garage and invent that alternative fuel solution everyone is looking for! Who knows how many possibilities there are. Need to talk to someone face to face? Well thats what a freaking webcam is for! Who likes anyone they work with anyway? VPN into your work network and do a virtual meeting. Why sit for 2 hours in a meeting just to be told something that could be explained in an email?
How do we get people to start doing these things? Well I have no idea if you can get people to stop having kids. Perhaps you can get them to have less kids that would be more reasonable. I think the biggest thing we could do to improve our individual lives, the economy, and the planet is to start moving towards offering more telecommuting jobs. In my mind the impact of converting hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions of people's jobs to a home based one is mind boggling. So get to it you capitalists. Stop pretending you care for PR sake and start doing it. Remember we are directly responsible for Global Warming and only we can change it! You don't want to be directly responsible for the extinction of the polar bear now do you?
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Rent or Buy Your New Home - How About Neither?!
Go on Google and enter "rent vs buy" and you pull up an endless list of articles that will spew the benefits of one or the other. Depending on how your area is being affected by the current mortgage crisis the correct answer could be neither. An example is the area I live in. There are pockets that are being severely hit by foreclosures but many areas (read nicer areas) are holding or even increasing in value. These homes are severely overpriced and they need to drop in price but they aren't. So if you can't afford to buy a nice place in an area that is retaining it's value then the right option should be to rent right?
Well not exactly. Because many people are being booted out of their overpriced houses that they couldn't afford to buy in the first place, apartment prices are rising like crazy. Just the other day I took a look at an apartment complex that I knew cost $750 to rent four years ago. Now it costs over $1000 to rent. They didn't add anything extra nor is that just inflation. These skyrocketing rent prices can be seen across the board. Even cheap places that charged less than $500 are now charging around $700. So whats the solution if you don't want to pay for an overpriced house that you know is going to depreciate faster than left over McDonald's sitting in your fridge?
Well take a look at all of these condos and townhomes that people are trying to get out of. They paid $200K+ or more for something that was barely worth $130K and now they are trying to get out before they get in too far over their head. These condos and townhomes can be very reasonably priced for rent or buy. However you do have to dig. Many people think they can set the rent high enough to still cover their overpriced mortgage while they move into a house. Try to avoid these at all costs. Look at the place and decide if it is being rented at a fair value for it's current market value. Its not your fault the home owner decided to buy a condo at the peak of the bubble right? So don't pay for their mistakes.
Another option is to move out of the area you live in. For example the area I live in is either depressed neighborhoods setting new records in foreclosures every week, or overpriced neighborhoods that don't look like they are going to ever go down in price. The area I am looking at moving to has very reasonably priced houses and the prices are still going down due to market forces. There are far more choices in houses to rent and to buy and all are much more reasonably priced. Its a smaller area but that works for me because I hate congestion.
Each area's market trends are unique and it's hard to decide what to do. However I think its time we started paying realistic prices for the places we live in. Those that bought in when the prices were peaking...well so sad so sorry!
Well not exactly. Because many people are being booted out of their overpriced houses that they couldn't afford to buy in the first place, apartment prices are rising like crazy. Just the other day I took a look at an apartment complex that I knew cost $750 to rent four years ago. Now it costs over $1000 to rent. They didn't add anything extra nor is that just inflation. These skyrocketing rent prices can be seen across the board. Even cheap places that charged less than $500 are now charging around $700. So whats the solution if you don't want to pay for an overpriced house that you know is going to depreciate faster than left over McDonald's sitting in your fridge?
Well take a look at all of these condos and townhomes that people are trying to get out of. They paid $200K+ or more for something that was barely worth $130K and now they are trying to get out before they get in too far over their head. These condos and townhomes can be very reasonably priced for rent or buy. However you do have to dig. Many people think they can set the rent high enough to still cover their overpriced mortgage while they move into a house. Try to avoid these at all costs. Look at the place and decide if it is being rented at a fair value for it's current market value. Its not your fault the home owner decided to buy a condo at the peak of the bubble right? So don't pay for their mistakes.
Another option is to move out of the area you live in. For example the area I live in is either depressed neighborhoods setting new records in foreclosures every week, or overpriced neighborhoods that don't look like they are going to ever go down in price. The area I am looking at moving to has very reasonably priced houses and the prices are still going down due to market forces. There are far more choices in houses to rent and to buy and all are much more reasonably priced. Its a smaller area but that works for me because I hate congestion.
Each area's market trends are unique and it's hard to decide what to do. However I think its time we started paying realistic prices for the places we live in. Those that bought in when the prices were peaking...well so sad so sorry!
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