RUSH: I practically had my heart ripped out when I saw this story. It’s about all the college graduates that don’t have jobs, that are on food stamps, that are on the WIC program: Women, Infants and Children. And there’s a story about a specific college graduate, a guy who has a PhD who was on WIC, food stamps, and a couple of other programs. He can’t find work. He’s a PhD. The guy got his doctorate! (interruption)
Oh, in what? (interruption) Oh. Well, this might be a factor. His doctorate…? Now, remember, this is 2012. The Vietnam War essentially ended in the seventies, correct? So we’re talking at least 40 years ago. This guy wrote his doctoral thesis on the premise that Vietnam vets returned home and were treated very badly. People were mean to ’em. They showed them no respect. I don’t know how many doctoral theses have already been written on that.
This guy writes something, a doctoral thesis that everybody agrees with. It doesn’t take a “doctor” to write this. He devoted his doctoral thesis to it; 40 years ago. Is it any wonder the guy doesn’t have work? But he’s got a PhD. It’s a fascinating look into the American education system, and this guy obviously wrote this based on things he’d been taught and told throughout his own educational experience. But it was just a story on numerous highly educated people who are on dependence one way or the other.
Here, from Investors.com. The headline says it all: “New Normal: Majority of Unemployed Attended College — 57% of those who are unemployed attended college. “For the first time in history, the number of jobless workers age 25 and up who have attended some college now exceeds the ranks of those who settled for a high school diploma or less.” (interruption) That’s a good question: What would my dad say about this?
I kind of wish he was alive so I could say, “Hey, Dad, do you know what your college degree is worth here? Fifty-seven percent of the unemployed people in America are college attendees or graduates.” My father… The reason Snerdley brings this up — and I’ve mentioned it a couple times. If you’ve heard it, please indulge me, because we have new people tuning in constantly on the program. But my father thought he was a failure in life as a parent for not being able to convince me to go to college.
His formative experience was the Great Depression. If you didn’t have a college degree, you had no chance. And he tried and tried and tried, and I just thought school was prison. I knew what I wanted to do when I was eight, and anything that stood in my way was an obstacle. And the largest thing standing in my way was school, so I hated it. And he went on and on and on about the importance of a college degree. And, of course, it is a societal norm.
This is one of these things that’s just accepted.
You’ve got to go to college after high school.
You must!
It’s the thing you do. Now you look at people going to college. They’re coming out with anywhere between $30,000 and $200,000 in debt, and 57% of people… And a lot of people see this is commencement time. I don’t know about you, but you can’t read the news without encountering excerpts or transcripts of commencement speakers. And I, every year, read people who have made commencement speeches making a singular point to graduates.
And that is: “Find out what you love and do it,” because that’s passion. What you love obviously is what you have passion for. A lot of people don’t know what they love, or don’t know what they want to do. College is a place to park yourself while you figure that out. Some people in college know what they want to do, but many people don’t. They figure they’ll find out when they’re there. But it’s just the next stage in life that everybody is just expected to do.
And so many of these “next stages in life that you’re just expected to do” seem to be — all these institutions and traditions seem to be — crumbling. They seem not to be what they always have been, or always were. “In 2011, 57% of those 25 and older had attended some college, versus 43% of the unemployed in 1992 who had gone to college. Those without a high school diploma fell from 21% to 12%,” meaning the number of people who didn’t even have a high school diploma were getting work.
Now, it doesn’t say much about what kind of work they’re getting, but still: They are. So all these things have people questioning everything they thought they knew, everything they thought they believed in so many areas of life. People say, “Jeez, maybe it isn’t true.” And when that happens — when all these institutions and traditions that people have invested in generation after generation after generation seem to all day not equal what they did in the past — then real confusion steps in.
But the solution for this, at least in the job market, is passion.
It’s finding out what you love and DO IT. If you’re able to succeed at that, you’re not really working. I mean, you’re spending time doing it so forth, but you love it so much, it’s not drudgery. It’s not something you get up and the first thing that you think about is, “Oh, boy. I can’t wait ’til this is over today.” That’s not how people who love what they do look at the day. I find that happening and being said more and more in commencement speeches, even from leftists.
Well, they’re about the only ones that do commencement speeches.
We right-wingers are never invited to do these things.
So, anyway, back to organic food. See, I’m passionate about this story. I love this story. I also have another story I love. It’s from CNN. “GOP Problem: ‘Their Voters are White, Aging and Dying Off.'” Can you imagine if there were a headline: “Democrat Problem: ‘Their Voters are Black, Aging and Dependent'”? Can you imagine the hell that would break loose if that story were ever printed? But since it’s the Republican Party and since it’s white voters: Their voters are white, they’re aging, and they’re dying off.
It’s a study from the Pew Hispanic Center from last week, and it’s about how more minorities are now being born in the US than whites. By the way, the media is having orgasms over that. If you’ve noticed, the media is running this story over and over again, day after day in a number of different places. “Their Voters are White, Aging and Dying Off.” More minorities now are being born than whites. Well, how can they be minorities? The point is, they won’t be very much longer.
And then the interesting thing is going to be: What happens when all these minorities become the majority? You know, being a “minority” is a mind-set. The way the left has structured things, being a member of a minority is a mind-set with certain entitlements. What happens when you become the majority? Well, it’s already happened to women. Women are the majority in terms of numbers against men, but still they are (as far as mind-set is concerned) a minority.