…I’m competing against 30 year-olds.

In Europe you would compete with 20-year-olds. Jobless people in Europe older than 35 years barely can find a job (regardless of their education).

That’s why Germany has developed a system of “social welfare” and job payment. Stupid. Employers pay so low wages that the government has to pay additional welfare otherwise the people coudn’t survive.

Euro 600 to 650/month (before taxes and social insurance) for a 45 to 48 hours work week are not unusual.

Uh, very inspirational but one size does not always fit all. Learning to “jump higher” is not always an option. Personally, I took a much lowwer paying job, because I’m a producer, not a taker. My reward? I’m making still tax payments to the IRS for income that I earned years ago. Why couldn’t I pay them at the time? Because I didn’t have the income….because I took a lower paying job.

Now, I’m finding myself unemployed, at 57, with health issues, and I’m still making payments to the IRS. Thank God my wife has a great health care plan.

Some people’s problems are systemic and not personal, and I wouldn’t be so quick to issue inspirational plattitudes as solutions. In my state, unemployment is at 10.7% and I’m competing against 30 year-olds.

Wanna trade places?

If you find yourself facing higher hurdles…then you better learn to jump higher…

Thats cute, but stop jumping to the hurdle setters tune would be smarter. You can try and get his hand out of your pocket for starters.

I sometimes feel that I should have tried to be a middle marketeer in cocaine. The bennies are there, but retirement’s a bitch

Is pessimism any surprise, given the message we’ve been given by the left wing media & politicians over the last generation or so? More & more people are being conditioned to think the only path to success is through government largess. ‘Affirmative action’, while noble in its intent, became a path towards equality of outcome, not equality of standard.
Census forms arrive this week! Be sure to put as your race ‘Native American’, as long as you were born here. If the canvassers come around and question you, it should be an insult, even if you’re a pasty white boy like I am.

Got mine yesterday (the noninvasive one) and filled out race as “other” and wrote in Native America -- on account I was borned here! I answered the same in 2000.

mfhorn wrote:

Hmm. Since I’m from the midwest, could I put ‘Central American’?

you could claim flyoverese. From flyoverland or flyover American…wonder if that is on the census?

Ich bin ein Jesusländer!

If I may quote myself from a piece with relation to my own situation:

“Lest you think this is whining; it’s not. It is a lament that I am sure resonates with many in my age group. We were the generation that created the “youth-worship” that we still see today and it has resulted in our being “tossed to the curb”.

We created the means of our own destruction by elevating youth above experience and wisdom, and now we reap the whirlwind. Collectively, we have dealt a serious blow to the “American Dream”; perhaps a mortal one.”

In my former position, I reviewed resumes and applications, many of them from young college graduates. Many couldn’t spell or construct a coherent sentence. They seemingly had no knowledge of punctuation and many completed their online applications in either all upper case letters, or all lower case letters. They sent me follow-up emails that began like “hey, this is linda, how r u?”. WTF is in their heads? We have an increasingly uneducated populace, regardless of educational levels.

I desperately want to still believe in the “American Dream”, but it’s more difficult by the day. The lack of basic common sense that exists in America today is astounding; from the White House and Congress, to GM, Chrysler, and the financial industry.

Does manufacturing cars, at a loss of $1,400 per unit, make any sense at all? Does making loans to people with no money, for things they obviously cannot afford make any sense? Does ramming through a health care bill, in spite of the overwhelming objections of the American people make any sense? Does paying generations generations of welfare recipients to make more babies, thus perpetuating the trend, make any sense?

I’m sure that to the political hacks in Washington, and the clueless MBAs that inhabit corporate America, this all makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, it is WE, the American people, who must pick up the tab for their foolishness.

The foundations of the “American Dream” are work, accomplishment and reward. The sense of entitlement that has fallen over our country is eroding those foundations like an acidic fog.

We have forgotten our history, and the sacrifices of our forebears. That loss of memory may well spell our undoing.