Thread: Things are not what they appear when you buy parts even from GM

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Originally Posted by CR55

Too many americans with a sense of entitlement! Everyone feels as though they are owed a good living and do nothing to produce!!!

Boy is that ever true, having owned my own bussiness for many years you find this so true and it is a shame

You guys have hit on one of the important issues, and it's related to the comment I made about a Federal Ed Dept. and it's value(?). Like I said in the beginning of the earlier post, many intertwined principles.

Back in my corporate period one of my duties was teaching young sales people, relatively new to the company, product knowledge and sales skills. Interestingly my bride does something similar today. Even then, nearly 30 years ago, young folks had that sense of being owed a living, but when my bride and I exchange war stories now, it's gotten even worse.

In part it's easy to understand why a lot of young people have those notions. For most, the first 18 or so years of their life they live in a micro-socialist environment. Their food, clothing, and shelter are provided for them by their "masters" (ignoring that teenage rebellion stuff for this discussion). Some parents make the effort to teach the kids the concepts of earning as they mature, but many don't.......how can they teach something that they themselves don't really understand?

Couple that with the "conventional wisdom" that they are fed in schools and in media that if they get a college degree they've got it made. Yes, statisically college grads make a higher standard of living, but not all. While those that spout that line would deny it, the verbage they use makes a promise that the diploma is the end goal. This is cheating the kids and the future employers. At best the kids come out of any level of schooling with foundational knowledge to build on, but they've not had that impressed on them. As an example, getting a degree in some of the "social sciences" has limited value. How many people out there are willing to pay (trade) for intimate knowledge of a foreign culture? There may be a few museums, or history departments, or some such, but probably far fewer than the number of graduates. While that happens, we have industry clamoring for engineers and scientists so they can continue to lead the world in idea developement. While all the young people chase after a degree, the employers are looking for people with skills........one doesn't necessarily lead to the other.

Lost on some of these people is the irony that some of the most successful (not just monetarily) people in our country are college drop outs. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, are just a couple that come to mind immediately. They became famous and wealthy supplying high value products and concepts to a willing world. It's what they accomplished, not that they just marched to the tune, that made them successful. We don't teach concepts of productivity and success, we teach conformation to process. Thankfully we have young folks who rebel against those notions and break out of the pack. Of course when they do, if they become "too successful" then they get demonized. Sigh.

And it's not just at the higher levels of training. A few years back when I had my shop I was surprised to learn that the long standing, urban high scholl nearby was being rebuilt to include an auto shop facility. Wow! Talk about retro! When the school had it's grand reopening there was a big let down. That part of the building ended up being storage for....... well, I don't really know, just piles of nondescript boxes. When you talk to the "educators" there you get various riffs on the theme "oh, kids today don't want to get their hands dirty. Besides, only the low performing kids go into that auto repair stuff and we want to encourage them to higher pursuits." What? Womens' studies??? Then I would explain to them that my employees were stand up family men who put in an honest days labor doing things that people needed to support their chosen life styles. I would point out that my Painter and top body guy each earned north of $75K (a dozen or so years ago), more depending on how the profit sharing pool penciled out. Looks of surprise! I would point out how difficult it was to find young people with a good work ethic, and cultivated mechanical (to include electrical) skills, and that fixing cars that operated only in this country were jobs that couldn't be outsourced. It's like these "counsellors" had never heard of such things. Well, the sad reality is, even though I might open the eyes of one of those "underlings" they had no real control over the process. Again, I point out how we waste resources with a distant Federal directed education process that doesn't, and actually can't, meet the needs of our economy.