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by elevenfist 3362 days ago
Able-bodied? Sure. Able-minded? Not quite. There's a huge surplus of middle-age men more interested in pointless office politics and political propaganda than doing good work, conducting themselves respectfully, and maintaining competence. And a dearth of the hardworking, skilled variety.

This isn't just a training problem, it's a cultural issue.

Praising charlatans like Scott Adams, and worse, failing to recognize their lack of ability and their motives is another cultural issue.

Ultimately, the reason we have so many unemployed is because we're stupid. We suffer from a cultural stupidity partly the result of longterm political propaganda campaigns by less-intelligent politicians and industry leaders who can't gain support any other way (because they are also stupid). If America wants to slip back to the level of a third world country in terms of political systems and the average education of the citizenry, a higher unemployment rate is just par for the course.

We have people unfit for training.

As an aside, how can the American workforce maintain world class competency and compensation? We need to interact with the best in the rest of the world. Bringing them here and giving them the option to stay in a safe, fair environment is best. On the flip side, engineers need to believe they are being compensated fairly for their efforts, and not take so many pains to prevent the industry from developing better ways of doing things.

3 comments

I disagree, I've met many very sharp people who happen to not have a background that does not fit the traditional 'knowledge worker' funnel. The fundamental problem is that once you make early life decisions - our society has increasingly closed the paths to retrace that decision. Employers are unwilling to fund retraining, even if one re-educates themselves there is discrimination for entry positions vs someone young and cheap (and has no expectations of good treatment...).
Wish I disagreed with you more than I do..

Still I think mostly that's just what the system rewards. Hardworking and skilled people with disdain for office politics will either get exploited or never get their foot in the door in the first place.

> Praising charlatans like Scott Adams, and worse, failing to recognize their lack of ability and their motives is another cultural issue.

I'm confused by this part. What does Scott Adams have to do with what you just wrote and how is he (in this context) a charlatan?

Yeah, I don't get it. Scott Adams draws comics lampooning office politics. He's not actually an office worker, just a comedian.
Adams has recently come out as a Trump supporter. Maybe that's it? He's still a strange choice of target, since he's not (as far as I know) one of the crazies screaming about "cucks" or Benghazi or whatever.

Personally I've found his blog to be pretty helpful for understanding the Trump phenomenon better. http://blog.dilbert.com/

Wasn't he an office drone before drawing Dilbert?
He was. His experience being a drone is where he drew his inspiration for Dilbert from.