I sure hope Kevin doesn’t major in one of these subjects. He’s starting out as a computer sciences major.
The 10 Most Worthless College Majors
College is a great place to learn and have fun. But let’s not kid ourselves, some degrees are as useless as the plot in a Michael Bay film. Here’s a list of 10 degrees that may be interesting, but do jack shit for you in the real world.
10. Art History
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: With an art history degree you could maybe curate an art gallery or work at a museum or .yeah, that’s it. That’s all you can do. And seeing as how every art gallery and museum I’ve ever been to has exactly one dude sitting quietly at a desk reading a New Yorker and eating a food that requires chopsticks, I’m going to go ahead and assume there’s not a lot of positions open in the field. That means you’re going to have to venture out into the corporate world. And let me inform you, when you’re interviewing with Bob from the HR team at Wal-Mart who’s wearing a tie that has the twin towers smoking with writing underneath that says “We Will Never Forget, your art history degree says to him “I’m a commie a-hole who thinks I’m better than guys with 9/11 ties.
What Job You’ll End Up With: After your parents boot your ass from your bedroom to make room for anything that’s not your bedroom, you’ll wander towards the nearest coffee shop and get a job there, which will allow you to meet artists who will thank you for allowing them to put fliers by the cash register that inform people of their upcoming show that touts “the combination of art and flute.
9. Philosophy
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: This isn’t ancient Greece: No one is going to pay you money, or allow you to sodomize their attractive son, in exchange for your knowledge of existence. Never has there been an employer who’s said “Man, we’re having all kinds of problems, I wish we had someone on our team who could reference and draw conclusions from the story of Siddhartha that would pull up our fourth quarter numbers. I took many philosophy classes and it involved reading and smoking a shit pile of weed. You don’t need to pay 20,000 dollars a year to do that. All you need is twenty dollars and a library card.
What Job You’ll End Up With: Thanks to your extensive knowledge of philosophy, you’re now self-aware enough to know that most jobs out there will make you totally miserable. So most likely you’ll wait tables part time and hope someone starts paying you for the bi-monthly entries on your blog.
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: If you’re not named Achmed or Bjork or G’Day Mate this isn’t a degree, it’s the last 18 years of your life. If you really want to study us you don’t need to go to some stupid class, you need only to sit back and watch a two-hour block of Must-See TV to understand The American. After doing my own research, it seems that this mysterious creature is a pot-bellied humanoid with a hot wife and bad credit who has a penchant for low-calorie beer, Chilis, Applebees, TGIFridays, Denny’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Dave and Busters, Steak and Shake, Chilis (again) and Red Lobster. Oh and he can totally demolish a White Castle Crave Case in, like, 20 seconds. OK, now give me my degree.
What Job You’ll End Up With: To take your American Studies degree one step further, you will be qualified to do 40-50 years of “graduate work cleaning tables and taking orders at a Chilis, Applebees, TGIFridays or Red Lobster. Or possibly Denny’s.
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: I didn’t even know this was a major until I found it on the Appalachian State website. According to their actual explanation of this major: “Music therapy is the scientific application of the art of music within a therapeutic relationship to meet the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of individuals. Which is a big, fancy way of saying “We’ll teach you how to make a mix tape. I guess I, too, am a qualified music therapist because my “Summer Jams “95 tape I made in the 10th grade totally rocked my house party. All my friends told me that kicking it off with Wreckz-N-Effects “Rump Shaker followed by Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise totally met their physical, mental and spiritual needs to help them get wasted on my dad’s Schnapps and Drambuie.
What Job You’ll End Up With: After realizing that yoga studios and elderly homes don’t pay people just to come in and set mood music, you’re sadly going to end up putting your degree towards burning a fire to keep warm because you are homeless.
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: Go into a communications class on any given day and it’ll smell like dried semen and booze. Reason being, communications is the major for anyone who wants to graduate, but doesn’t want to stop getting totally wasted on weekdays. Here’s the bad news, if an employer is going to hire someone to help decipher how human beings communicate, he’s going to hire someone with the letters “Dr. before their name, not the person who first checks to see if a class is offered online, then when they find out it’s not, let’s out a “gaaaaay bro.
What Job You’ll End Up With: You’ll go to several job interviews that turn out to be pyramid schemes, even though at first you won’t realize this and come home and tell your parents, who you still live with, “They said I’ll probably be making six figures in less than a year just by selling these beer cozies.
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: Despite what “Dancing with the Stars and “High School Musical may tell you, there aren’t a lot of dancing jobs out there,so you better be good because there aren’t any gigs for mediocre dancers. Outside of New York City or some crap in LA there is absolutely nothing you can do with a dance degree that doesn’t involve actually dancing for money. And since the Des Moines interpretive dance movement hasn’t really taken off yet, you have a better chance landing a job as an 8-Track repairman or a member of the Beatles.
What Job You’ll End Up With: After moving to New York and trying out for Hello Dolly! or Damn Yankees or any of the other seven Broadway plays that want dancers and not landing a single one because you got your dance degree from Ball State, you will find ample opportunity to show off your choreographic skills at one of the city’s many strip clubs. You’ll just need to change your name to Crystal or Bambi and you’ll be able finally live out your dream as a dancer. (Mom and Dad will be so proud!)
4. English Lit
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: If someone can spend a weekend with a box of Cliff’s Notes and have only a slightly less conversational knowledge of what you spent 4 years studying, you probably don’t have the most employer friendly degree. Having an English Lit degree is like being a member of the Kansas City Royals: No one cares and the best you can hope for is every once in a while someone buys you a beer because of it.
What Job You’ll End Up With: You can read and comprehend, so that gives you an advantage over 99.5% of the people that peruse Craig’s list job listings. Therefore, you’ll most likely end up landing an entry level position at a random small company, or showing up to your interview and being raped repeatedly by a group of masked men.
3. Latin
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: Not only does no one speak this language anymore, but we already have all the Latin that exists in the world. There’s no new Latin that’s hot off the presses that needs immediate translating. I’m no business major, but majoring in a language that doesn’t exist anymore doesn’t sound so good for job security. And I’m sorry to break the news to you, but the world doesn’t need someone to translate The Bible or the inscription on the side of a Post Office or El Loco Latino’s “Latin House Party.
What Job You’ll End Up With: Since you majored in something that doesn’t exist, you’re going to have two jobs. Your first one will be as the annoying pretentious guy who gives everyone the Latin etymology of every big word he hears at every dinner party he attends. Your second, and most lucrative job, will be as a Subway Sandwich Artist.
2. Film
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: No one in hollywood gives a shit that you made a short film about an alcoholic albino that discovers the meaning of life through the help of a retarded child. Unless that retarded child was played by the son of Harvey Weinstein, your film or degree will be as pointless as the last three seasons of Lost
What Job You’ll End Up With: If you’re lucky, you’ll have an uncle who can get you a job as a production assistant on CSI Miami, where your time will be spent making coffee runs and finding whores that will let David Caruso pee on them.
1. Religion
Why It Won’t Help You Get a Job: Sorry God, but a major in Religion is about as worthless as St. Brice (The Patron Saint of Stomach Aches.) Even Duke University can’t put a solid sell on this degree: “A major in religion offers intellectual excitement and can be a pathway to a liberal education. OK, you sold me. So now I get to shell out about a hundred thousand dollars so I can know what to wear to a Shinto ceremony and learn how many virgins Allah will give me if I blow myself up in an Israeli square? If it’s OK with you, I’ll keep my money and stick to my sinning-a-lot-now-and-repenting-on-my-deathbed plan.
What Job You’ll End Up With: This one is tricky. On one hand you’ll probably end up working behind the desk of a Christian Science Reading Room. But on the other, you may end up with everlasting peace and spiritual enlightenment. Let’s call it a draw.
@MA
As I said in another post, IMHO Austrian Economistas are just as clueless as Keynesians when it comes to managing the economics of scarcity. Beyond that, I have extreme difficulty accepting as wisdom the idea that a Gold backed currency could resolve our current economic woes; or even that it could have prevented the collapse we have occurring here now. Rather, the collapse simply would have come sooner. Anyhow, the whole bizness is based on faulty assumptions of intrinsic value which conveniently ignore real problems of resource constraints at the same time. I would consider an Austrian Economics Ph.D. with a dissertation on von Mises and Hayek to be just as worthless as a Keynesian one, or a Black Studies major for that matter.
RE
Here is a job for the 2011 Graduates. Navy SEALS are hiring!
RE
Navy needs more SEALs
NAVY SEALS
June 19, 2007|By Paul Vercammen CNN
These helmets represent SEAL recruits who didn’t make it through the training.Just as a new wave of Navy SEAL recruits on Coronado Island, California, crawls out from under barbed-wire obstacles, muscles burning and sand sticking to sweat, the Navy has launched an aggressive recruiting campaign to expand the maritime special forces to their highest levels ever.
The target is a total SEAL force of 3,038 in five years.
“We need to grow our special operations forces across the services,” says Navy SEAL Capt. Roger Herbert. “And for the Navy that means an additional 500 SEALs.
“My job is to grow the force, to get more guys through here, but never reduce the quality.”
The SEALs, which stand for sea, air and land units, were formed by President Kennedy to carry out secret operations. They were the first American troops to set foot in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, and they are assigned some of the most dangerous, and secretive missions, in the military.
Because the SEAL training includes 5½-mile swims, sleep deprivation, bone-jarring obstacle courses, constant running, climbing, jumping, diving and other tortures, historically just 25 percent of the recruits graduate to become Navy SEALs.
But that number jumped to 32 percent last year, because the SEALs are targeting young men who have a better chance of enduring the mental and physical challenges of training, according to Herbert.
Jake Williams just graduated as his class honor man and flashes a tooth-paste commercial smile when asked how he prepared for the SEALs’ notorious training on land and water.
“I ran a lot, swam here and there,” Williams explains. “When I was old enough, I got certified so I could go scuba diving. I did a lot of outdoor rock climbing and that kind of stuff.”
The SEALs are now encouraging extreme-sports enthusiasts and athletes from a variety of sports to try to prove themselves in an ultimate contest of attrition, the SEAL boot camp.
“We’ve got to bring in the right candidates,” says Navy SEAL Cmdr. Duncan Smith. “So we’re going after water polo players. We’re going after wrestlers. We are making people who may not traditionally thought of a career as a SEAL, we’re making them aware of the opportunity to serve in Navy Special Warfare.”
SEAL recruit Christopher Maddox played soccer and baseball in high school and now wears the brown T-shirt that shows he’s survived SEAL Hell Week and is tantalizingly close to graduation.
“A lot of people come here, and they’re all different shapes and sizes,” Maddox says. “It doesn’t matter. You could be in the best physical shape of your life and not last one day here.”
Once a SEAL recruit decides he cannot take the pain anymore, he must walk up to a bell and ring it. The end is called “ringing out.” The failed recruit then puts his helmet on the ground. The green helmets sit in a row. The last names are prominent in white letters.
The helmets stay lined up until graduation — stark reminders to every SEAL of how few recruits survive.
@all
I am truly disappointed by all you self-proclaimed wizards of useless college degrees.
10 useless degrees (or majors) listed. But not a hint on the most, the ultimate, the absolutely worthless degree ever granted by an education institution anywhere on Earth:
ECONOMICS
@Apollo
I beat you to that comment. Its above here about 10 comments back.
“I can’t believe nobody mentioned the most worthless Major of All so far. Economics. A Black Studies Major with a Minor in Twittering knows more than an Economics Ph.D. from Princeton.”
You need to read more carefully.
RE
@RE
How much longer can this feds kick the can down the road? Years, months, weeks, its all a scam so when does the end come. When does the dollar collapse and the crisis in the US street begin?
Give your best guess your on a roll
thanks
sensetti – you are obviously new here, so I will be as kind as possible. RE has NEVER gotten a prediction right. NEVER. Let me repeat it once more just in case you missed it: RE HAS NEVER GOTTEN A PREDICTION RIGHT. He will probably be happy to give you some sort of timeline, but whatever he says, it is safe, or even mandatory, to bet against it.
I won’t be so nice next time so wise up. You only get away with being a dumbshit once.
@sensetti
As llpoh mentions, I haven’t had great success lately with predictions, though I did call the Oct 2008 collapse correctly after watching Bear Stearns implode in March of that year. Since then I have consistently underestimated the ability fo Da Fed to prop up the markets, so this whole bizness is taking longer to play out than I figured it would. Each time I see a relatively large Black Swan come in for a landing, I tend to think that will push us over the edge like Bear Stearns did, but so far the Geniuses running Da Fed laptops have been able to paper over even Swans as big as Fuk-U-shima. (BTW llpoh, how’s that Nip BAU by December prediction working out for you? lol)
As llpoh also mentions though, I don’t mind continuing to speculate on the timeline because its the most important immediate question of our time. The two biggest economic Swans circling over head right now would seem to be one of the PIIGS defaulting in Euroland or CONgress here being unable to agree on a Debt Ceiling hike by August. Thing is, if you can see a Black Swan circling, its not really a Black Swan because its predictable. Real Black Swans blind side you out of nowhere.
On the political end, MENA remains a Powderkeg with an already lit fuse, and once things heat up in Saudi Arabia that would be very difficult thing for Helicopter Ben to paper over. However, NATO is pretty much fully invested now with all the cool Hardware to rain Death From Above on any Towel Heads not toeing the line, so unless somebody gets an itchy trigger finger on the Nuke Button down there, they probably can keep the Oil moving another couple of years maybe. The Israelis would seem the likeliest candidates to pitch a Nuke out if the current border clashes with Syrians escalate. Israeli Border Guards iced around 38 Protestors/Refugees trying to cross the border yesterday, some of them apparently children from some reports I read. Mainly I think these people are simply trying to escape the escalating civil war in Syria, but the Israelis don’t want ANY more pesky Towel Heads on their patch of land first granted to them by God, then handed back to them by the Brits after WWII.
On the Geological & Cosmological Event end, as I mentioned my Earthquake monitoring program shows increasing activity all along the Ring of Fire now, a Chilean Volcan blew yesterday and of course there are many locations along the Ring due for a Big One. Los Angeles being swamped by a Tsunami or San Francisco reduced to rubble would certainly be a major Black Swan.
Now for the WAGs. I think that after whole lot of Drama that even I would have trouble orchestrating up, CONgress will increase the Debt Ceiling before the clock runs out in August. This should keep the Dollar from immediately imploding, though it guarantees further and accelerating depreciation. I do think there will be a major crisis in the Euro by October or so, which will then set off another Banking crisis. However, I don’t underestimate Helicopter Ben’s Printing ability anymore, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he flooded the system with a QUADRILLION digital FRNs to swamp the system in liquidity. How that would play out I have absolutely no idea, but it can’t be too good.
I think the SNAP Card program will continue to work and continue to expand over the next 2 years moving into the POTUS Race. No matter what Swans land here, by the time the Campaign is under way you should start to see more of the kind of political action we saw up in WI a few months ago. I think the Demopublican National Conventions will be a freaking ZOO. We don’t have any Hippies now, but we do have plenty of angry fat assed Tea Baggers and angry fat assed FSA recipients who will likely be shouting each other down in the streets. I also would not be at all surprised to see some sort of Assassination attempt made on some candidate (Ron Paul?).
By the end of 2012, I think we will be accelerating rapidly in the Collapse. So I stick with my Mayan 12/21/2012 Date, although I don’t really think we will see Los Angeles slide into the ocean precisely on that date. LOL. Really, the Collapse has already occurred, its just a question of Degree here as to when it really will spin out of control.
Bottom line, you still probably have about 18 months to get your Bugout Plans in order or set up your Doomstead. Above all, remember the last place you want to be when TSHTF is in the Big Shities. If you are stuck near one because you still have a good paying Job in one of them, then be sure you have made good Bugout Plans. I highly recommend having Preps stored outside the Big Shities in the homes of relatives or friends who live in more rural locations. Also have multiple Transportation Plans to get there. Start of course with always having your gas tank topped off, and if the place you are going to is more than a single tank of gas away, have the additional gas in extra containers. Plan routes off the Interstates, these are Choke points if its a Rapid Crash. Have alternate routes planned and all the maps you need in Hard Copy, in case there is an EMP. Try not to stop at all for any reason, have a porta potty in your car or van. Avoid Cops and Roadblocks, run a Police Scanner all the time as well as a Radar Detector and keep your CB scanning all the time also. You will pick up lots of information from Truckers if any of them are still on the road when you make your Bugout. Obviously this only works if there is not an EMP.
Don’t count on your GPS being operational. If it turns into some kind of declared Martial Law situation, Da Goobermint will likely shut down the commercial end of the GPS system so only the Military can use it. It would be a good idea to Practice Drive the Bugout so you recognize the landmarks and turnoffs you will need to make.
If you do not get out in time and Da Goobermint has limited Travel by automobile, then be prepared to hoof it or use bicycles over a period of weeks to make it to your Bugout location. Have lightweight camping foods and cash in small bills. You can carry a few Gold coins also, those might be useful for bribing Cops in extremely dire circumstances. Carry a Gun, obviously. Mainly just a small handgun for personal defense, you don’t want to be lugging heavy automatic rifles and shotguns. Those should be stored in advance at the Bugout Location.
Other option if you are in a Coastal City is having a Sailboat or even Power Boat ready to go, even a trailerable one will do. In the case of a power boat, like the car make sure its tanks are always topped off with enough fuel to get you to your Bugout Location. Obviously, you are limited in this case to other Coastal areas, but if I was say in New York Shity, I would look for a bugout location on the coast of Newfoundland for instance. On the West Coast, I would head for the Fjords of British Columbia.
Will you have to make this Bugout by 12/21/2012? Probably not, but you sure will be kicking yourself if you haven’t planned it out and you DO need to do it. Not everyone can move out right now for many reasons. However EVERYONE, even people with the most limited means can plan for the day they have to Bugout quickly. If your means are extremely limited, this just means having a backpack with essentials, a small tent and a bicycle, along with whatever cash you actually have. Everybody should have that, even if you have a car. You might have to abandon it at some point. You’ll DEFINITELY have to abandon it once the gas runs out and there is none to buy anyhow.
I can’t predict the exact date we will see things really get bad, I just am completely convinced that they will get really bad, and definitely inside the next decade. Prepare yourself mentally for that day, so you know what to do and do not panic. If you have made all your preps and plans and execute them well, you will do better than 99.99% of the population. Then even if it doesn’t work out, you can go to the Great Beyond knowing you did the best you could to survive Armageddon.
RE
muck
i’ve tackled your reading list, but in the wrong order. i picked up harry browne’s book about five years ago. and upon your suggestion, i started plowing through human action for the second time the other night.
i’ve been slacking on hayek, and i started with ‘the road to serfdom’ (of course), but since that one, i haven’t been thorough or systematic. and the only book of hazlitt i have is ‘economics in one lesson’.
now i know why you make so much sense.
here is a good hayek story, how he handled inflation: http://brookesnews.com/072304hayek.html
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Actually RE, last year you also correctly predicted the civil disturbances in the Middle Eastern and North African Theatres.
You are the only poster that could write “Bottom line is”, and then write 50 lines underneath it!
🙂 I’m sure that pissed LLPOO off no end.
I almost forgot – English Rose, you ignorant slut.
Sensetti – hopefully you now understand why you have to be chastened. If you ask RE a question, even one llike what time is it?, you get 2000 words fired back, 1999 of which are indecipherable. Do not let it happen again.
ER – predicting conflict in the middle east is like predicting I will have a dump after my first cup of coffee tommorow. You ignorantsocialist slut.
And yes it pisses me off. Let there be war.
Let there be war? Typical fucking Yank. Honestly, war mongering even over the internet!
I don’t do battle of wits with unarmed opponents such as yourself LL POO. 🙂
Why don’t you stick to wanking over your bank statements?
Learn a trade i.e. skill first and then seek education.
Plan for the worst , pray for the best.
If you can build , hunt , grow and cook you’ll be miles ahead of the pack.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north988.html
Dr. gary North has written, as he does again today (see above) about how to beat the college racket. His ideas morror much of what’s been written here already, but he’s quite thurough and has lots of links. Enjoy!
@ RE
not new here I read TBP everynight before going to bed. I enjoy the banter. Thanks RE
These are not worthless majors. The author of this list seems to think that the only thing you study for a bachelors degree is the major, and that your major locks you into a career. When has that ever been true? Of course the majority of the classes in any BA from a particular college are the same, which is why employers, if they require a BA often won’t specify any one in particular. A dumb major, to me, would be something intellectually vacuous, your wasting time and money if you aren’t learning anything. My all time favorite has to be Canadian.AmericanStudies, yes that is real, I noticed it on a drop down list of possible majors when I was applying to Western Washington University a year ago. What the he’ll do you study in there, I wonder, History of Hockey 201? Music of Canad: Rush & Justin Bieber?
Stuck — thanks for the Jobs speech. Impressive.
jmarz — many good points there. As for me, I never got beyond an associate degree from the University of Cincinnati — and that was playing the game of “self=development” at Ma Bell. But I had an ambition that didn’t need a college education then, with a technical background and an FCC radiotelephone license, that was the inroad to the niche area of television and radio engineering.
Skills got me my first TV employment, then later helped build the original Ch. 19 in Cincinnati. Went to Saudi Arabia as a contract engineer on their govt. broadcasting system. Back to the U.S. Next, offered a contract out of the blue for American Samoa. From there, to Australia for ‘a while’ that turned out to be permanent. LOL.
Almost everything I’ve learned that counted was from self-education. In my spare time, another niche, mostly writing on technical areas, one book published, scores of articles (not great pay but hey! it keeps the wolf from the door) and four years doing a column for a computer magazine.
Opportunities abound, but you have to work to find them.
RE — mating ‘managing’ with Austrian economics, well … I’m surprised MA and howie didn’t tear your testicles off and make you eat them. I’m too gentle for such praxeology.
@ textbooks — apparently the new crop have ‘codes’ in text necessary for completing assignments. And they change for subsequent editions, thus used textbooks have no value.
@ER
Oh yea, I forgot about the MENA prediction. Far as the “bottom line”, it was just a pretty looong bottom line. LOL.
@sensetti
I recognized your handle. I was aware you are not a newbie even though llpoh didin’t recognize it. He has some memory and reading comprehension issues.
@ Novista
Managing economics does not necessarily require predicting human behavior in complex situations. It mainly requires that you can be reactive to whatever those behaviors actually turn out to be. Sort of like being on a sailboat in a storm, if you get hit by a powerful wind gust you let up on the sheets and it keeps you from getting knocked down.
Anyhow, my main problem with buying Austrian Economics is that some incredible idiots buy into it. Have you ever read Jeff Harding’s stuff on the Daily Capitalist? Talk about me getting predictions wrong! This guy was writing how the weekly Friday Bank failures were a sign the economy was recovering!
Besides that, Austrian Economics aficionados all seem to be Gold Bugs. Antal Fekete, FOFOA, Muck About here. I’ve written numerous essays on why I do not believe metals are a solution to our monetary problems. I’ve yet to read a decent argument deconstructing those essays. The problems lie in energy and resource management and distribution, not in the choice of monetary instruments. Metals have the same problems with the paradox of thrift that fiat does, actually probably worse since the tendency to hoard them seems even greater then with fiat. Anything which is saved like that doesn’t circulate as currency well. Creating derivative instruments (theoretically gold-backed paper or digicurrency) suffers the same problems fiat does, and Banksters and Pols are just as likely to corrupt that.
Anyhow, in an environment of Surplus and steady Growth, lots of economic systems can work, though some are more efficient than others at exploiting the resources. No economic system insofar as I know has been successful in managing Scarcity and Shrinkage. That is why Warfare evolves out of these situations.
RE
Gold up $10 today and is now 1% from its all-time high in the history of life on earth.
The much touted collapse of precious metals by deflation doomsters has failed to materialize.
Mr. Perfect Predictions strikes again.
I’d like to see more intelligent, ethical, mathematically inclined, young people go into Criminal Justice, specializing in financial crimes.
We haven’t had the margin calls yet 🙂
Not to mention those pesky Derivatives. Did you read Tyler Durden’s piece over on ZH?
The Real “Margin” Threat: $600 Trillion In OTC Derivatives, A Multi-Trillion Variation Margin Call, And A Collateral Scramble That Could Send US Treasurys To All Time Records…Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/05/2011 21:42 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/real-margin-threat-600-trillion-exchange-derivatives-moving-central-clearing-multi-trillion-
RE
I’m pre-pharmacy. It appeals to my personality type, it can go anywhere, and people will always need medicine. It’s not something lots of people can flood into, a la law, as a Pharm D is much more difficult than a JD. It has a pretty sweet ROI, too, by the way. Yes, it’s one of the “hard sciences”, but I don’t view the liberal arts as worthless by any means. You never know when the knowledge you can gain from a rigorous liberal arts education comes in handy. I’m the type of person that tends to know a ton of esoteric trivia about a wide range of topics, to the point that people, if they need to know something will always tend to ask me first. I just enjoy learning…but like Jmarz said, I can do that WITHOUT completing a bachelors in English Lit.
I supplement what I learn in class with education I give myself in my spare time, on websites like this. Not to say that the liberal arts requirements I had to complete weren’t interesting, but I probably could have learned them myself on my own time.
Bottom line, higher education should really only be considered if 1.It is necessary for your career path (in my case) and/or 2. You are genuinely interested in learning.
If you think a piece of sheepskin will automatically raise your earning potential, you are being quite optimistic. Witness all the BA’s and law degrees working jobs with pay below the national average today. I have a suspicion that much of a widely-touted income gap between college graduates and high school graduates simply consists of the college bound being more intelligent and ambitious to begin with, rather than anything the universities add to them. And unless you are the scum of the Earth, and intend to work at Goldman Sachs, there is no reason to work yourself to a soulless shell in high school and spend the big bucks to go to Harvard. Why pay 200 grand for an education that’s really not much different than what you can get at Cheapass Regional State School, or even a community college? And if you claim it isn’t, than why do they allow you to transfer credits, hmm? The truth is that most of the prestige of “good” schools is simply the reputation they have as the places Smart People Go, rather than any superiority in their educational program.
@howard’nNY: Thanks.. Harry Browne probably made the biggest difference to my life’s path as I read it when it was first published and it was like a BIG LED lit up.. He is truly an original thinker. As far as Von Mises, Hazlitt and F.A. Hayek are concerned, the last two are the pupils of the first, so hearing echoes is normal.
@RE: You did it again, telling people what I promulgate which you obviously still don’t have a clue.
Not in any particular order, I believe in the following: honesty to self and everyone else no matter what; stay out of debt at any cost (i.e. accept whatever reduced “standard of living” you have to in order not to borrow); Be totally, 100% responsible for your actions and words. If you fuck up, say after me, “Gee, I fucked up and I apologize for that!”.; be kind to women and children (no sexism here – I’d want them to be kind to me too!) and dogs. Fuck cats.; never stop working to be a better, more informed and nicer person (this one is harder to do than the rest); never stop learning new things; never stop working at something…….
I fully accept the fact that the paradigms under which I grew up, worked and (mostly) prospered have and are changing. But that’s ALWAYS been the case as time marches on. Things change, success is a moving target and you work (WORK) within the paradigms that exist now – and a good chunk of the paradigms that I worked through are still as good as the list above is.
But there are new ones; mainly too many rats in the box and since WWII, far less freedom as our government morphs into the monster that T. Jefferson predicted it would before he put his life and fortune on the line signing things (that are now ignored) back in the 18th Century.
That’s what I lay out here whenever the urge strikes and you shut up long enough… LOL..
MA
@Muck About
Can I shorten that down for you?
Truth, Justice, and the American Way. The Adventures of Super Muck About!
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Good Old Fashioned Family Values! That’s what we need here. The Golden Rule! The 10 Commandments! Hey, while your at it, how about Utopia? And of course good old fashioned Free Market Capitalism!
Sorry Superman, Fuk-U-shima is spitting out Kryptonite and the Dream World is turning into a Nightmare. Your experience was all an illusion, courtesy of the thermodynamic energy of Oil. Now we gotta mop up the mess the dream left behind, and that is not going to happen with good old fashioned famly values. Sorry.
RE
@RE,
so glad you believe I haven’t a clue.
All I know is what I see, learn or uncover
And I know from mucking through a nine year “downturn,” that the government will keep on hiring until the music stops.
I also know from my HR background, they will only (primarily) hire college grads. Hell, my town is currently looking for a four year degree to fill an entry level clerk job that any eighth grader could do.
Because those grads with gumption and brains and worthwhile majors tend to run from the government, and because I interviewed hundreds of government workers and reviewed 10x that number of resumes, I know that the government does hire worthless degrees.
I do agree with you that once the shit hits the fan (and none of us know when that actually happens, hell it is already way past how long I thought the fraud could go on) there won’t be government jobs. But, for today, there are MANY. Federal is hiring everywhere, states are hiring sales tax auditors and building inspectors.
You are right, I’m not very confrontational on the internet, mainly because I learned long ago that beauty fades, but stupid is forever.
Finally, this is not the first time you have stated I make you puke.
You are welcome
(I’m figuring all the purging is great for your waistline).
Teresa, do you even READ the Newz? As I said, clueless.
RE
State, local layoffs to hit record levels
By Tami Luhby @CNNMoney June 6, 2011: 12:32 PM ET
State and local government job losses are expected to soar this summer as teachers are laid off.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Don’t look to state and local governments to prop up the job market.
To the contrary, this cash-strapped sector is set to go on a record-breaking layoff binge when the new fiscal year starts on July 1.
33917PrintComment
State and local governments are forecast to shed up to 110,000 jobs in the third quarter, the first time the blood-letting has risen into the triple digits, according to IHS Global Insight.
“We’re on a downward path,” said Greg Daco, principal U.S. economist at IHS. “It’s not looking good.”
State and local government employment has been a drag on the economy all year, averaging a loss of 23,000 jobs a month over the past three months. Meanwhile, the private sector has created an average of 180,000 a month during the same period.
In May, public employment shrunk by 29,000 jobs, mostly at the state and local level, while businesses created 83,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. All told, the sector has lost 510,000 positions since its peak in August 2008.
States still cutting
Though tax revenue is starting to rise, states are still wrestling with multi-billion-dollar budget gaps. Federal stimulus funds helped minimize job cuts until now, but that money essentially runs out on June 30.
So states are planning to slash funds for education, social services and local governments, as well as downsize their payrolls even more, in the coming fiscal year.
And that’s the good news.
The bad news is that local governments are in even worse shape. Not only are they losing state aid, but they are finally feeling the fallout from the mortgage meltdown. Property tax assessments, a major funding source for municipalities, have only started to drop.
Hiring slows, unemployment rises
Caught in a fiscal bind, local governments will have to reduce personnel expenses since it is the costliest part of their budgets and they’ve already slashed their programs and services.
“We’re at the tip of the iceberg,” said Christiana McFarland, the National League of Cities’ program director for finance and economic development. Cities “don’t have many options at this point.”
Teachers and school staff will bear the brunt of the layoffs this summer, as hundreds of thousands will likely be laid off around the nation. The national job numbers should reflect the hit in July and September.
It’s not uncommon for state and local governments to take longer to emerge from a recession. But usually by then, businesses have ramped up their hiring. This time around, private sector hiring has remained soft, making government cutbacks that much more painful.
0:00 / 2:15 State workers jump ship
And it will likely take at least a year before the state and local government job market revives, economists said. Until then, they are waiting to see the extent of the downsizing.
“The only question is ‘how much worse?,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Here’s another one for you.
RE
State employee jobs declining
More eliminations expected when proposed budget begins July 1
8:00 PM, Jun. 4, 2011
Written by
Mike Hasten Filed Under
News
Local News
BATON ROUGE — Layoffs, resignations, retirements and position eliminations chopped more than 7,000 jobs from the state payroll between the day Gov. Bobby Jindal took office and Dec. 31, records obtained from the Department of Civil Service show.
And judging from the governor’s proposed budget and amendments adopted by the House for the fiscal year starting July 1, more job eliminations — many requiring layoffs of state workers — are on the way.
The proposed budget slices jobs in most departments of state government. Not all positions in state government are filled. Departments often have more positions than people, but over the years, that number has dwindled.
“It’s not been this low since the Roemer administration,” State Civil Service Director Shannon Templet told the Senate Finance Committee Friday as it examined her office’s budget.
In 1991, former Gov. Buddy Roemer left office with 82,051 employee positions in the executive branch of government.
Civil Service records show the state had 93,554 employee slots when Jindal took office in January 2008 and 86,429 on Dec. 31.
Templet said Friday there currently are 82,842 full-time and part-time employees, just 791 more than 20 years ago.
In the current year, more than 1,900 positions were targeted for elimination, Templet said. “This fiscal year, 727 were laid off. That’s people.”
“We’re down about 4,200 people” overall from previous years, she said, and “when they hear layoffs are coming, people retire or quit.”
Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, said he has heard for years “cabinet officials say ‘I can’t do anything because Civil Service ties my hands.’ If there are bad apples, they need help getting rid of them.”
Templet said Civil Service “reformed itself” in the past few years and created a more flexible system. “One size fits all doesn’t work any more.”
One problem she is seeing, though is “there is certainly low morale” because state employees are facing a second year with no chance of getting a merit pay increase because of state budget problems.
“State employees get a bad rap,” Templet said. “They are dedicated, hard-working employees. They are thankful for their jobs.”
Denying any chance of a raise, though, “is not the best HR practice.”
Unless a system is created that would reward employees for hard work, “the morale problem would be exacerbated,” she said. “We’re already below the marketplace. The further we fall behind, the more that increases.”
The Civil Service Commission has twice sent to Jindal a “pay for performance” plan, but the governor rejected it. She said an adjusted plan is being developed that will be put up for public review in October or November and then voted on by the commission in December.
An examination of state employment during the past five administrations shows a rise and slight fall of state employment prior to Jindal taking office.
Jean Jones, deputy director of Civil Service, said the department keeps track of employees, but “our role is not to determine how many employees are needed. Any time a new program is created or service is offered, it usually requires more employees.”
Governors and their administrations over the years have created numerous new programs requiring staffing.
For example, following the 9/11 attacks, Gov. Mike Foster’s administration beefed up the Office of Emergency Preparedness into the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
After Hurricane Katrina, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration established the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
Civil Service records show former Gov. Edwin Edwards’ fourth term saw the fastest growth in state jobs in the past 20 years. He expanded the 82,051 of Roemer’s administration 8.65 percent to 89,148 by the time he left office in 1995.
Gov. Mike Foster’s first administration increased the number 1.87 percent to 90,819 in 1999. After established GOHSEP and other programs, there was a 3.06 percent climb in employees during his second term.
When Blanco came into office in December 2003, there were 93,601 state jobs on the payroll. As she left four years later, there were 0.05 percent fewer positions, at 93,554.
They are only talking about layoffs, not actually doing them. And to answer your question, no, I don’t find much of a compelling reason to read NY’s local news.
Michigan has been through this SIX times in the past eight/nine years. Basically, we haven’t cut ANYTHING, hell, in many areas we have added workers, departments and bigger budgets.
I know they are yelling like chicken-little and I know that a janitor here, or a file clerk there has lost their great gig. And yep, they sure aren’t re-filling many positions lost to attrition.
But actually SHRINK, the workforce? Don’t make me laugh.
Maybe New York has run out of lane to kick the can, but I have faith for them for now. If Michigan can put off any actual changes (not to mention California), then there is hope for the NY workers.
You apparently are of the belief that magically states are going to fix their problems. I am of the belief that kick the can, play fast and loose with numbers and continue to avoid the pain that NEEDS to happen won’t happen. At least until it HAS to, and we are a way off from that.
The way in which they have avoided the layoffs in all the prior years was by accessing the Bond Market. The Bond Market is at melt down stage now. Da Fed cannot buy State and Muni Bonds without a massive QE, and the Chinese sure aren’t going to buy them.
So I will make a bet with you. There will be extensive Goobermint layoffs after July 1st, which will get the kind of business which went on in WI a couple of months ago rolling in quite a few states. Loser has to put the Dunce Cap on in their next 10 posts after September 1st by adding a Dunce Cap pic, OK?
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RE
It appears that we have FEWER government workers in 2009 than we did in 1962.
http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp
Of course, it Gub’mint supplied data so who the fuck knows how accurate it is.
[img]http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp[/img]
Wow Stuck, great Cleanup Hitting! Tag Team on Teresa!
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RE
BTW, its not surprising that total Goobermint workforce decreased in size. Computers are a big part of that. Lots of number crunching jobs in the IRS were taken over by computers, and the military also needs fewer clerical personnel as a result. Computers also allow Social Workers to carry bigger caseloads.
What is even more important to realize is that during the period from 1960 to 2010, FSofA Population nearly doubled from 179M to 307M. So in fact, Da Goobermint workforce is a much SMALLER percentage of the population now than it was in the 1960s.
Teresa as usual is clueless, spouting anecdotal information based on her ideological beliefs. The facts show otherwise. Below is the table Stuck tried to put up in text format
Year Executive branch civilians (thousands) Uniformed military personnel (thousands) Legislative and judicial branch personnel (thousands) Total Federal personnel (thousands)
1962 2,485 2,840 30 5,354
1963 2 2,498 2,732 30 5,260
1964 2 2,470 2,719 31 5,220
1965 2,496 2,687 32 5,215
1966 2,726 3,129 33 5,888
1967 2,968 3,413 34 6,416
1968 3,020 3,584 35 6,639
1969 3 3,040 3,499 36 6,575
1970 4 2,944 3,104 38 6,085
1971 4 2,883 2,752 40 5,675
1972 2,823 2,360 42 5,225
1973 2,781 2,289 44 5,113
1974 2,847 2,198 46 5,091
1975 2,848 2,164 49 5,061
1976 2,833 2,119 50 5,002
1977 2,840 2,112 53 5,005
1978 2,875 2,099 55 5,028
1979 2,823 2,063 53 4,939
1980 4 2,821 2,090 55 4,965
1981 4 2,806 2,122 54 4,982
1982 2,770 2,147 55 4,972
1983 2,820 2,163 56 5,039
1984 2,854 2,178 56 5,088
1985 3,008 2,190 58 5,256
1986 2,966 2,206 55 5,228
1987 3,030 2,213 58 5,301
1988 3,054 2,176 59 5,289
1989 3,064 2,168 60 5,292
1990 4 3,067 2,106 61 5,234
1991 4 3,048 2,040 64 5,152
1992 3,017 1,848 66 4,931
1993 2,947 1,744 66 4,758
1994 2,908 1,648 63 4,620
1995 2,858 1,555 62 4,475
1996 2,786 1,507 61 4,354
1997 2,725 1,439 62 4,226
1998 2,727 1,407 62 4,196
1999 2,687 1,386 63 4,135
2000 4 2,639 1,426 63 4,129
2001 4 2,640 1,428 64 4,132
2002 2,630 1,456 66 4,152
2003 2,666 1,478 65 4,210
2004 2,650 1,473 64 4,187
2005 2,636 1,436 65 4,138
2006 2,637 1,432 63 4,133
2007 2,636 1,427 63 4,127
2008 2,692 1,450 64 4,206
2009 2,774 1,591 66 4,430
RE
ER – I have seen the aresenal you bring to a battle of wits – a straw and two leaves of toilet paper. You really need to control your delusions of grandeur before they get you in trouble. You ignorant slut.
ll poo
You need to keep your wits about you …
it’s spelled “arsenal” you dickhead.
Wanker 😉
@ ER – I’m going to take the opposing view here, too. I live in a border city in Texas. Construction work here has BOOMED for the last 4 years, with little sign of letting down. Military spending and Border Patrol are the two biggies. They are building Ports of Entries, Border Patrol Stations, Bridges across the river, and ramping up the local military ranges like nothing I’ve ever seen. I think the number of dollars spent on construction is half a trillion (?) Fortunate for me and my family, as we benefit directly from Goobermint spending. But someone, some personnel has to occupy the new facilities. And, it’s not like they’re closing any existing facilities down.
One difference I think I may have picked up on is the difference between local/state and Federal spending. The states and local entities cannot print money, so they’re constrained by an actual budget. The Federal Gov’t has a technology called the printing press which enables them to print as much money as they want, in order to continue with their obscene and dim-witted wars on this/that/the other thing. (CAVEAT: I didn’t read for comprehension, I just scanned the headlines.)
So, maybe it’s a possibility the non-money printing governments HAVE to perform layoffs, while the money-printing Government can continue to hire at will, until the whole thing comes crashing down, in spectacular fashion.
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&imgrefurl=http://www.activistpost.com/2010/08/hindenburg-omen-indicates-stock-market.html&usg=__nJ9JtGv-7g34dFyUN3X7KUldgJU=&h=322&w=383&sz=40&hl=en&start=0&sig2=ql3VeuuaoNfnOboDmbq74g&zoom=1&tbnid=fhKTutEujSGwpM:&tbnh=127&tbnw=151&ei=q17tTYXpHczbiALQv_XhCA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhindenburg%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D709%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=446&vpy=375&dur=508&hovh=206&hovw=245&tx=123&ty=107&page=1&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0&biw=1280&bih=709[/img]
I can see I’m a dim-witted fool who cannot insert jpegs into the post. It was going to be the Hindenburg.
ER – you ignorant slut, how would you know – you ignoramus Brits spell ass arse, favor favour, etc. etc. The time has long past that you Royalists can teach us Colonials anything.
Tim – if you are taaking the side opposite RE, then by definition you are not a dim-witted fool.
Fuck the banks.
In Michigan, not filling vacancies and early retirements 91 fill for each 2 retirees this time around) have kelp total state civil service employment under 50,000. (It was 50,000 in 1970 and we had a smaller population then.) The workforce has shifted, as well, to be much more heavily skewed toward Corrections than it used to be, with correspondingly fewer in other positions. Corrections Officers do not need degrees; many of my night-school students have been C.O.s trying to earn degrees so that they could move up, or out, of their jobs. There are about 15,000 in the system, and they are the single largest classification in MI state gov’t.
While bureaucracy does tend to expand (see “Parkinson’s Law” for a humorous, but basically true explanation of how that happens), limits were reached some time ago, at least in Michigan, where our 10 years of recession have exhausted every one-time fix, gimmick and shell game that they could dream up. The stimulus funds only delayed the inevitable. The game of ‘kick the can’ is indeed over. If layoffs, now happening at the local level to cops, firemen, teachers, etc., do not happen, en masse, in MI state gov’t, it will be because the money is saved elsewhere – via pay & benefit reductions, etc.
Getting back to education, per se, if one does want to attend college in a traditional manner, Berea College has never charged tuition in over a century of its existence. http://www.berea.edu/ is their website. They primarily serve the poor of Appalachia, and their students work for their education by serving Appalachian communities. If you can get admitted there, it sounds like a pretty good deal.
@Tim
There is no doubt that part of the “stimulus” of the Helicopter Man’s funny money has gone into various “shovel ready” projects. Obviously with construction among the hardest hit industries, some Goobermint construction projects have dropped in to fill in the gap. Quite true up here as well, I know quite a few locals who are working on projects on the Military bases up here.
However, those folks aren’t Goobermint workers, they are Private Contractors hired by Da Goobermint to do these projects. Teresa’s argument was with respect to Goobermint workers, not spending by Da Goobermint on Bridges to Nowhere building.
Have they started building any big Concentration Camps down there yet? I did read about the Human Waste Reprocessing Facility in San Antonio.
Cities Fueled By Human Waste – San Antonio Goes Brown, Not Green
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Note the nice Green Color? Here’s another picture from inside the plant
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RE
ER got your knickers in a twist llpoh?
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RE
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ER is a mental midget, and it is so easy to piss her off. She makes DP look like Einstein. Here is a photo of her at work:
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LLPOH
You think just because English Rose is a butt ugly halfling stripper she is dumb? That is sexist.
Punk – no indeedy. I apologize for the confusion, and to all butt-ugly midget strippers out there. It is mere coincidence that she is a butt-ugly midget stripper and also happens to be dumb as a rock. I never wanted to imply that all butt-ugly midget strippers are stupid – just English Rose. This is ER without her make-up on:
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That is good, I’m glad for the clarification.
English Rose, I am very sorry to hear about your condition. To suffer traumatic brain injury on top of all of that. These are hard times, even the best butt ugly midget strippers can fall to shame and wind up giving hand jobs for a bus token and half a can of spam. Fortunately for you, I know that Smokey is a very wealthy and….. eccentric man. I’m sure he would be very interested in getting to know a woman of your….. girth.
Punk – I am sure ER has plenty of experience hanging onto 11.5″ poles.
Some useful advice to those going to college in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields would be to use the system for what they can get out of it. For example, a lot of engineering programs have significant resources devoted to helping students find internships that last from a summer to a whole year.
Another thing for a science or applied science major to do would be to get involved in a professor’s research program early on. I’m sure a computer science major could benefit from the extra coding experience, and all can benefit from learning how to think with the scientific method. Critical thinking skills were once called survival skills…
And for people in fields like IT and computer sciences where there are thousands and thousands of schools that offer degrees in the material, would certainly benefit from minoring or learning the subject matter in a different field. I bet there are some jobs in computer modeling of fracking for hydrocarbons for people that like coding and know something about geology…
My name is David.
Hint to llpoo…. that’s a man’s name you ignorant cunt.
ER – If indeed you are David, then I apologize.
Perhaps you might want to consider a more manly name, if indeed your name is David. How about British Pansy? No, no, too masculine. What about Lacy Lucy? No, still too masculine. Well, then, how about Pommy Princess? That’s it – perfect. Captures your manly essence perfectly, you cross-dressing-too-stupid-to-come-up-with-a-gender-appropriate-pseudonym ignorant slut.
ER – and I am sure I am right about your proclivity to hang onto 11.5 inch poles, whatever your real name is.
LLPOH….maybe he calls himself English Rose because he has a connection with Elton John….that English cocksucker .
Here’s Elton singing about him.