07-02-2019, 08:58 PM
One does not get away with it. One might have appreciated the ways of the GI around 1980, but one could not find an economic niche by trying to imitate GI habits. The ways of people in their late 50s seem an indelible part of the national character -- until such people start to disappear. This applies even to spending habits. Unless people predictably age into certain markets (children into pop culture, the people in late middle age into products dedicated to the elderly), even an economic institution can fade.
Here is the best career advice that I can offer other than to become as proficient as possible at some desired specialty: seek out a career, if young, in an activity whose participants are retiring. As an example, welders are heavily concentrated in the Boom generation, and anyone who can weld can seemingly get a job just about anywhere, even in places in which the economy is nuked. The dividing line between employment and retirement is now passing through the mid-1950s for most occupations, so such is good advice for getting an entry-level job. People are living longer because they are taking better care of themselves, a pattern that began when the GIs were in middle age and started to get old, and has continued with the Silent and now most Boomers. Think about it: until the Millennial Generation entered adulthood we Boomers were the lightest smokers since the Transcendental Generation of Abraham Lincoln. The Gilded and Lost smoked like chimneys, and look what that did for them.
So welding seems a surprise among Boomers as a career? It is not an elite occupation, but it does put food on the table rather reliably -- the sort of thing that the humble find adequate. Sure, I can't imagine Donald Trump as a welder except as someone who would get others crippled, injured, or killed due to his recklessness and arrogance. A welding torch is only about as dangerous as a machine gun or a black mamba if mishandled. Maybe it is a good thing that Donald Trump has spent most of his career and made the vast majority of his money as a rent-collector. That is the ideal career for someone hollow, lazy, and lucky. "Lucky" of course means that one does not have one's inventory of property in such declining areas as Detroit, St. Louis, or Cleveland -- or in places that have never been great, like (name your favorite example of a place that has been a $#!+hole for a century).
Here is the best career advice that I can offer other than to become as proficient as possible at some desired specialty: seek out a career, if young, in an activity whose participants are retiring. As an example, welders are heavily concentrated in the Boom generation, and anyone who can weld can seemingly get a job just about anywhere, even in places in which the economy is nuked. The dividing line between employment and retirement is now passing through the mid-1950s for most occupations, so such is good advice for getting an entry-level job. People are living longer because they are taking better care of themselves, a pattern that began when the GIs were in middle age and started to get old, and has continued with the Silent and now most Boomers. Think about it: until the Millennial Generation entered adulthood we Boomers were the lightest smokers since the Transcendental Generation of Abraham Lincoln. The Gilded and Lost smoked like chimneys, and look what that did for them.
So welding seems a surprise among Boomers as a career? It is not an elite occupation, but it does put food on the table rather reliably -- the sort of thing that the humble find adequate. Sure, I can't imagine Donald Trump as a welder except as someone who would get others crippled, injured, or killed due to his recklessness and arrogance. A welding torch is only about as dangerous as a machine gun or a black mamba if mishandled. Maybe it is a good thing that Donald Trump has spent most of his career and made the vast majority of his money as a rent-collector. That is the ideal career for someone hollow, lazy, and lucky. "Lucky" of course means that one does not have one's inventory of property in such declining areas as Detroit, St. Louis, or Cleveland -- or in places that have never been great, like (name your favorite example of a place that has been a $#!+hole for a century).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.