Back to the Wild

Michael Barone has an insightful column today about why the old-style "lifetime" jobs like working for the Detroit auto companies at a hugely high hourly rate and then retiring with beaucoup benefits simply do not exist any longer. The challenge faced by our kids is at once more difficult and more exciting:

"The bad news for the Millennial generation that is entering its work years is that the economy of the future won't look like the economy we've grown accustomed to. The "hope and change" that Barack Obama promised hasn't produced much more than college loans that will be hard to pay off and a health care law that lets them stay on Mommy and Daddy's health insurance till they're 26.

The good news is that information technology provides the iPod/Facebook generation with the means to find work and create careers that build on their own personal talents and interests.

As Walter Russell Mead writes in his brilliant the-american-interest.com blog, "The career paths that (young people) have been trained for are narrowing, and they are going to have to launch out in directions they and their teachers didn't expect. They were bred and groomed to live as house pets; they are going to have to learn to thrive in the wild."

But, as Mead continues, "The future is filled with enterprises not yet born, jobs that don't yet exist, wealth that hasn't been created, wonderful products and life-altering service not yet given form."

Interesting, if disconcerting, but something that Americans have always excelled doing. The challenge is now passed to the next generation.

townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2012/04/23/liberal_nostalgiacs_dont_understand_jobs_of_the_future