Panama People

I listened, incredulous (as is often the only way) when I heard a reporter on Radio 4’s Today programme announce that a study had discovered (‘discovered’ mind - no doubt by some Pulitzer-level miracle of investigative journalism) that over fifty percent of young people ‘drift’ into work without (gasp) a degree. She sounded astonished that such denizens were capable of breathing, let alone earning a living.

Drifting? As if the only way you could get to stack shelves, sweep up leaves or fuck about keeping people waiting for a cup of coffee – no, drawing a heart in the froth does NOT make you a barista – was if you had paid your dues at the altar of higher education. When the economically illiterate Tony Blair made the fallacious deduction that as graduates earned more than the hoi polloi, forcing 50% through the degree sausage machine would somehow increase everybody’s wage, those of us out here in the world of work were screaming “No!”

Getting a sixteen-year old to learn about getting to work on time, every day and actually, you know, working, is hard enough. Trying to do that with an endless succession of twenty-five year old graduates (MA in intersectional gender and social butt-hurt issues) who can’t yet tie their shoelaces and wear their sub-standard scholarship as an entitlement gong, is just a waste of everybody’s time and energy. Education isn’t about ‘things’ it’s about life, which includes finding out how everything actually works.

Maybe a lack of general common sense explains why so many people are over-excited about the ‘scandal’ of the Panama Papers. (Notwithstanding David Cameron’s clumsy handling of his own involvement) If only those nasty rich people who legally avoid paying more tax than the governments ask them to would voluntarily pay more tax – then we could have a universal basic income... they think.

“You didn’t just make that money.” they bleat, “Society let you make it.” Society, they say, built the roads, made the energy and bred and cared for the workers, all for those hated capitalists to exploit with their greedy ideas.  I have news; put everybody on a universal basic income and watch that income get redistributed really quickly, right back to the people you took it from. In any case, if everybody started out with something, that something would soon become the datum level... that is, two-grand or ten-grand, everybody would still, effectively, start out with nothing.

Every time some social justice type bangs this particular drum they assume that all the money that the people they hate have access to is unfairly gained, that it is liquid and that it can be effectively taxed. They assume that it can be equitably distributed at no cost and with zero corruption. They also imagine that if this is done, the people being fleeced will be happy to keep on generating more. Possibly the ultimate aspect of their naivety is the belief that everybody else – you know, the ones who are not capable of creating wealth – will spend it wisely.

Not funny... because it's true.

But here’s an idea. Maybe if they chose a vocational education early on, learned to become somebody useful, then went out to earn their own money not at 23 on some extended graduate trainee-ship, but at 16 when they should be perfectly capable of picking up a trade or other useful work skills; maybe then, by the time they come to have an interest in other people’s tax they will have paid plenty of their own and be very cautious of enabling the heavy hand of state to pick their pockets. Just a thought.

Jobless

A new report states that while STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) graduates are generally satisfied by the value-for-money of their degree, students studying other subjects such as those lumped into the general headings of ‘the arts’ or ‘social sciences’ are rather less happy that they have forked out £27,000-plus to get a Masters in finger painting… and even less happy when they realise that with such a qualification their entire career path is going to have to involve dealing with children, who they have belatedly realised are not actually ‘the future’ but are, in fact, just a pain in the arse.

So much for Tony Blair’s all-must-have-prizes culture; when everybody gets a degree, degrees in general are worthless. If the intention was to sell the true potential of youngsters down the river than I’d say mission accomplished. The real career prospects for many graduates today is not great. Twenty-one/twenty-two/twenty-three years old and the only worthwhile thing they have on their CV is the nebulous ‘retail’. Which in most cases means ‘shop assistant’.

And what is it with CVs? Children at school produce these meaningless lie-sheets when they have nothing yet to lie about. And then they mass-mail them to employers who are only interested in them turning up, keeping their gobs shut and getting on with the job. You don’t need a CV to wait on tables, work in a store, stack shelves, drive deliveries or work on a building site. What you need is a work ethic, some ambition and an ability to not be so up yourself. They say the job of a CV is to get you an interview, so I guess the thinking around degrees must be to have something to put on your CV…

Meanwhile the job specification writers are being no less inventive in pursuing their side of the arms race that the world of jobs and jobbing is engaged in. Where once somebody with the requisite paperwork would have phoned the number on the small ad which declared ‘Drivers wanted – must have clean licence’ and been asked when they could start. Now they have to join the circus to provide national newspapers with headlines that read ‘1000 applicants submit CVs for one paper round job’. The smart guy should have just driven there and knocked on the door declaring himself ready and willing.

It’s all part of a wider malaise which the proliferation of worthless qualifications introduces. Once, the world was your oyster with good grades in principal subjects at school opening the door to a wide range of career possibilities. But turning the education handle and churning out rows of neatly packaged, ever more specific degree-educated clones with no clue about the real world of work condemns many to a miserable future in a narrow employment corridor from which the only escape is yet more expensive education.

Would you employ these graduates?

Almost every job available to the masses – outside of boffins, geniuses and the rarefied world of rare skills such as pioneering surgeons, premiership footballers and a handful of charismatic entertainers – requires only basic education to a good standard and the rest can and should be learned on the job. Training and experience, not pieces of paper, is what makes people employable. So if you have a Mickey Mouse degree from a Looney Toons ‘university’ and you’re languishing on Jobseeker’s Allowance, blame the goofy world of socialism. That’s all folks!