Mike Rowe on Working Smarter, Not Harder

[sanantone]

Mike Rowe ticks me off on a regular basis..
I could go on and on and on...

I appreciate hearing your direct experience. Oftentimes, we hear people saying it's easy to do this or that when they've never really done anything like it, or when they've never really financially struggled. 

There are people in this country who experience true poverty. As a whole, the U.S. is nowhere near a developing country, but most people in this country are sheltered from areas that have extreme poverty. Forget Starbucks. Flint, MI didn't have clean water. Their children were being exposed to elevated levels of lead. In parts of Maryland, kids are in old houses with peeling, old paint, and their IQs are being affected by the lead. In Appalachia, there are still people who don't have indoor plumbing and/or don't have electricity. 

There are also over a half a million people who are homeless in this country. Millions of kids in the U.S. get most of their meals at school. When school is on break, they often don't know when they're going to eat next. I had a friend who said that she and her siblings would drink a lot of water to feel full because they sometimes had no food to eat. My family often ran out of food, and we would get donated bread that was moldy, pasta that had larvae in it, and off-brand canned goods that somehow had roaches in them. There were many times when we ate bread for dinner. I worked for a social services agency, and we regularly got calls about homes not having water because the family couldn't afford to pay the bill and families living in cars. I remember receiving a report about a kid in North Texas who was sleeping in a room with a broken window, and there was no heat in the home. The temperature was in the teens.

I work in a public library within walking distance of a middle school where more than 90% of the kids qualify for free lunch. I help their parents file for food stamps; these are dads who drive forklifts or do auto repair or work construction and moms who work retail or food service or cna and so on and they all qualify for assistance. A lot of them have done some college or some trade school and neither thing has helped them get anywhere. 

Homes where I live are at least $140k and the household median income is $41k. These families all live several families to a home. It's not unusual for the kids I work with to share a bedroom with 3-5 other children. 

We finally have a program to provide free lunches during the summer. A lot of kids used to fail school on purpose so they had to take summer school so that they could eat. 

We finally don't qualify for assistance. I'm actually thrilled to owe some taxes and not qualify for EIC.

There are a lot of for-profit vo-tech schools that have taken advantage of poor people. The admissions people help them fill out the FAFSA and tell them everything will be covered by financial aid. They tell them that they will get jobs and make wages that they won't make. The medical programs are the worst because you have people going $10k to $30k in debt to make $13 to $16 per hour as a medical assistant, and their wages will never go much higher.

I do, however, like union trade programs, but they aren't as numerous as they used to be. I still think anyone who qualifies should apply for the Mike Rowe scholarship or any other scholarship or grant program. 

Whichever career is chosen, it's good to think long-term. How long will you be able to physically do your job? Will you be able to retire comfortably? I received a lot of reports of elderly people not eating for days, not being able to afford to run their A/C when it's over 100 degrees, not being able to afford their medication, and living in mobile homes with holes in the floor.

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Because I'm a nerd, I was analyzing the list of qualifying programs and thought that fire science and technology was an interesting inclusion. Fire science and technology programs, alone, aren't worth anything. The valuable part would be if the program included a firefighter academy, but you don't need a certificate or associate's degree to become a firefighter. However, you'll be expected to already be an EMT-B at minimum. There are larger departments that will provide all of the training. In those cases, there's no reason to pay your own way through school. 

This got me to thinking why law enforcement programs weren't included. There are certificate and associate's degree programs that include the police academy, and there are more police openings than firefighter openings. Is police work not dirty enough? 

Then, I saw the agriculture and farming programs and wondered what kinds of jobs a certificate or associate's degree in that field would lead to and if you even need post-secondary education to get those jobs. The scientific jobs want a bachelor's degree or higher. 

Recently, I watched a documentary on black farmers. Farms and farming skills are usually passed down within families. Black farmers used to make up 14% of the farmers in the U.S. They now only make up 2% of the farmers. The USDA settled out of court for a class action lawsuit brought by black farmers. The USDA admitted to having discriminatory loan practices. Most farmers depend on getting loans annually.

https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/n...835640001/

There's currently a class action lawsuit over a company intentionally selling black farmers fake seeds.There's also the issue of independent farmers, in general, having difficulty competing with commercial farms.

[Ideas]

I think some people move, but end up moving back, or their new situation is not good either. An econ professor:

“It could be that the new jobs that are being created just aren’t as productive or enticing as they used to be, or it could be that people themselves are less willing to move” for a new job.

He points out that the economic crisis of 2008 may especially have left people reluctant to leave the safety net of family and friends to seek a better job in another town or city.

From https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-07-20-...millennial