The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

Devil's advocate: everywhere gets so many of these that they use automated filtering to sort out resumes. Consequently, there is no point in spending ANY effort until you get a positive feedback from an employer.

So, you have a purely random process on both sides that nobody is willing to put in any energy to fix.

Meh, I had a PMP for a while. I let it expire because nobody cared. Besides, once you have the certification they milk you by making you earn continuing education credits (which for the most part cost money to obtain).

'Right to work' is a specific term used in the US to designate labor legislation used to cripple unions and shouldn't be confused with a general 'right' to employment.

The choice in terminology had me very confused on the first read.

I think young people should always respect their elders, even though they can and will be wrong at times. Doctors, engineers, politicians, teachers, parents - they're all fallible.

I don't think my upbringing was a failure - I think it's pretty normal to be extremely idealistic when you're raised in a middle class, educated bubble like I was. Most of my friends had great, successful parents and I think we all just assumed that if we followed the rules, got good grades, kept our noses clean, and went to college like our parents wanted us to, that we would be happy and successful just like them.

That was the magic formula for their generation. In fact, it allowed my mother to come to the US, get a good job at ROME Corp (later acquired by IBM in its heyday), and to pull her family out of poverty in Taiwan, where they had been so poor after her father's death that they had been forced to put 2 of her younger siblings into an orphanage. A college education allowed my dad to start his own law practice and to take out a mortgage in California, back when real estate was something people lived on, not invested in.

Now, this paradigm of education=prosperity has shifted dramatically, leading to disillusionment. My domestic friends all want to go into either tech or finance, and some (with degrees from good universities) can't find any jobs. Many of my very intelligent, driven international friends are being forced out of the US post-graduation because nobody wants to sponsor them, when in many cases they would be 10x better than a domestic candidate. The ones who stay are the lucky ones with connections at large companies that are willing to trade visas for favors and personal connections. But sometimes I wonder how lucky they really are to be staying in the US with the trajectory we are currently on.

Politically, the financial crisis and subsequent great recession has had a profound impact on me. When I studied economics in high school, I loved it because it presented such a clear path to efficiency and utility: free markets with no regulations, no distortions, no bullshit. Then 2008 came along, and I began to hear my parents argue about how they were going to afford to continue to pay for my high school, or send me to college. I didn't realize the magnitude of the event (the great recession) at the time, but became more aware of it as I started to look at the job market in college. My studies caused me to wonder why our system was set up in such a way that something so terrible could happen on such a large scale. How people were blinded or refused to see what was going on beneath the surface of the economy; how those who were supposed to protect us and our families from financial catastrophe failed miserably.

Politically, it made me realize that we need to have a strong government to regulate the greed of the free market, and that when that system of checks and balances fails, people lose their jobs and their homes. They get sick. They become homeless. They rely even more on an already-weak state. Some die.

My senior thesis was on the denationalization of currency (Friedrich Hayek's idea) through blockchain-based virtual currency, which would essentially end the government's control over the supply of money and put it into the hands of a regulated currency market. So that's where I ended up - tear down the current festering system, put better regulators into power, and let them steer the unparalleled engine of the free(ish) market. Not completely revolutionary, but definitely a bit weird and radical.

> In my opinion, you are conflating cause and effect, but per an earlier comment I made it is incorrect for anyone to believe that their passions are not shared by others. And when those others have more money than time, that is how they "help."

If its okay with you, I'll go with the people with doctorates in the field over your opinion on the internet.

Out of curiosity, how many academic papers would it take saying you are wrong before you'd believe me?

> If you run for office in the US, you will form an organizing committee. And you will put in your organizing documents the things you believe should be true about the world that aren't (this would be your platform) and because that is a public document, it will be published by the State or Federal elections commission with all the other platforms out there.

You seem to be operating under the delusion that I don't understand how it works. I do. That is the problem.

> And you will be surprised, perhaps pleasantly so, perhaps unpleasantly, that your "agenda" or platform may line up with what some billionaire thinks is the right thing as well, or maybe they just want to use you to steal votes from another player in the race (this is politics after all) and you will get donations to your committee from weird sounding names like "Higgly Piggly Partners, LLP" which are people who generally want to remain anonymous and want to help you get elected. Some of those people might be billionaires. You probably won't know but it is always good to ask what they hope to achieve by getting you elected.

No, I won't be surprised.

There was a good guy I know that tried this sort of thing, no billionaire would back him. In the end, people like me and his millionaire brother did. It amounted to nothing because enough "other people" funneled money into the election to "anonymously" send out mailers that implied his brother was a "Chinese citizen" and his campaign was funded by money from China.

Similarly, a councilman with platform similar to what I'd like failed to get elected.

How you ask?

Well, first they slanted the system to prevent the guy from getting elected. There was a court case that found the voting method violated the population's civil rights. They then found a guy with the same name and a different middle initial to split the vote. He's been used as a proxy in such votes before. He'd have won except for the 4% of people who voted for the wrong guy. [ Remember, the proxy doesn't actually do anything other than get his name on the ballot. So his contributions are basically payment for services rendered. ]

I could go on about all the other things money has bought that I've seen first hand if you like. Shall I?

> Politics is people. Its people collectively trying to achieve a goal, some for themselves, some for the group. Whether you are in a company or a government or on an island competing for a million dollars, politics is the process by which negotiation, decisions, and change is effected. It is perfectly legit to say that you don't understand how it works, but it is incorrect to say that you cannot participate. And sometimes participation can lead to understanding which can lead to great things. But you won't know unless you try.

No, Politics is money and the ability to buy people to do your dirty work for you.

No one is going to give me $3+ million to lie to people to win a single congressional seat. However, they are perfectly happy to do that for people who hold the sort of views. How much do you think the opposition raised? Less than a million.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/th...

But hey, money doesn't matter. The ability to hand a man a large chunk of money to run as a candidate whose sole job is to put his name on the ballot to confuse people [he didn't actually use any of his campaign funds to campaign, fyi].

But hey, prove me wrong. Go right ahead. Go find some nice district where there are some large incumbent players and run for city council against their interests. See how far that gets you. [ Hint: They'll hire a guy with a single character difference in the name, fund half a dozen candidates with larger treasuries than you. ]

Hell, I'll even tell you what happened to the last guy so you know what to expect.