Tucker Carlson is Half Right

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I agree with you that a college education does not guarantee a job that pays a living wage.

We are fortunate that in our area, the value of the skilled trades is touted, and there are many opportunities for young people to enter the training programs (through the local community college) that will certify them in various skilled trades. And we have literally thousands of job openings for these trades in our areal, especially for welders, pipe fitters, mechanics, and drivers!

I will also say that not all of us are cut out for the skilled trades!! I am a total failure at any kind of handiwork or craft! No concept of spatial relationships, machine innards, flower arranging, changing a light bulb, or even replacing batteries! And I don’t have an I-phone–I would probably end up throwing it out the window! !

What I mean by “getting serious about school” is FINISHING school, high school. Without that high school diploma, very few options are available. I’m not sure that the military takes high school dropouts nowadays. Even if a young dropout manages to get a job at a fast-food place or a factory, they are highly unlikely to move up to a higher-paying position withing their company.

In our city, the dropout rate among African American males is 50%. There is absolutely no reason for this. I’m not sure why so many drop out, but I know that there are a lot of gangs in the area who promise a big new car, new clothes, and a big gun in exchange for working with the drug trade. Yes, for a while, these young guys have it made–look cool, have lots of money, and get respect (or fear). But so many of them end up in jail or dead.

Things are looking up in our city because the high schools are now using an “Academy” model, where the students sign up for an interest area when they enter high school. I believe the areas are Science/Medicine, Arts, Engineering, Industrial, and Humanities. I’ve heard lots of good things about this approach–the kids say that their education makes more sense, and they don’t have to waste time with courses that don’t have anything to do with their goals.

I think this approach helps kids to start thinking about their adult lives while they are still in Middle School, and that’s a good thing. I think high school graduation takes a lot of kids by surprise, and they have no idea what to do next. And to be honest, I think a lot of parents don’t encourage their kids to think about the future–I think a lot of parents don’t want their children to ever grow up and leave home.
 
That Academy system is a big deal, way better than the way it is normally done. Part of the reason I hated high school and barely graduated was because of all the extra nonsense I had to take that had no relevance to what I wanted to do with my life.
 
Pattylt said:
Open question:
Did America shift from laws favoring the family unit over the business interest to favoring businesses over families?
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In some or many ways, yes. No fault divorce laws made divorce much easier, essentially negating the marriage vows of permanence and fidelity. Legally, marriage vows are less binding than a home mortgage. Alimony is almost unheard of anymore, so a wife who put in years or decades maintaining a household and raising children is hardly ever entitled to liquidated damages if a husband abandons her for a new model. In legalizing same sex marriage, the state made the state of marriage itself nearly meaningless, breaking with millenia of tradition. Adultery and alienation of affection lawsuits, once common, are no more. They were a way of protecting marriage, now just a quaint history.

The sexual revolution liberated men from marriage, and made women into commodities.

Marriage is no longer favored in the tax laws. Recent changes mean that married couples can’t even take personal exemptions for dependents.

There are probably other factors as well.
 
Pattylt said:
I’m not denying that some may find it impossible to move away…I just think that many don’t want to. It’s scary to relocate.
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Yes it is scary. When my wife and I were first married, we lived quite close to both of our families, visited and talked often. I had a job that I hated and with little chance of advancement. I was offered a better job at better pay, but in a different city 3 hours away. We had two weeks to move and for me to start the job, which I had never done before and wasn’t quite sure I could do. We packed up everything into a U-Haul and moved over one weekend into a rather sad threeplex apartment. It was rather rought for the first several years, with no family nearby and knowing no one in town. But the job worked out; we found a great parish, made new friends, and my wife found a job too. We bought a house at a reasonable price. It’s amazing to think of all the wonderful new friends we would never have known had we not made that leap. And we were still close enough to family to go back for holidays.
 
JimG said:
In some or many ways, yes. No fault divorce laws made divorce much easier, essentially negating the marriage vows of permanence and fidelity. Legally, marriage vows are less binding than a home mortgage. Alimony is almost unheard of anymore, so a wife who put in years or decades maintaining a household and raising children is hardly ever entitled to liquidated damages if a husband abandons her for a new model. In legalizing same sex marriage, the state made the state of marriage itself nearly meaningless, breaking with millenia of tradition. Adultery and alienation of affection lawsuits, once common, are no more. They were a way of protecting marriage, now just a quaint history.
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First, men used to marry down as well as across. The executive marrying the secretary. The doctor marrying a nurse. Etc. That was quite common in my parents’ generation. As part of the trend toward stratification of marriage, men tend not to marry down anymore as that became a surefire recipe for alimony payouts in addition to child support. So if they stick to marrying across to a wife with a similar background then the case can be made that the wife doesn’t need alimony.

Second, it’s rarer for the husband to quit the marriage than the wife when children are involved. Because the statistics are politically incorrect, one has a hard time finding them anymore, but it was known as of the early 2000’s that where minor children were involved that wives initiated at least 65% to 70% of the divorces. Much of this was just wives blowing up their marriages because they felt like it and the laws aided and abetted them in kicking their husbands out of the house while retaining access to their provisioning of property and child support. Only the upper middle class and higher can afford to pay that price now. So only they get married.
 
Also there is no law that requires mothers to spend child support on the children. So many fathers end up paying double. They pay the government mandated child support and then have to buy clothes, food, and other things because the mother used child support to buy a manicure and some new shoes for herself.
 
JimG said:
If it were up to me, I’d aim for a truly stable currency and an inflation rate of zero. But the Fed is more afraid of deflation than inflation, thus their policy of continually devaluing the currency.
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I see the point of targeting modest inflation as it enables continuous adjustment by the markets and avoids the negatives that come with deflation.

 
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